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Vincent Gono
THE idea by nations to commit themselves voluntarily to abide by the laws that promote peaceful co-existence and human rights was noble. It gave birth to a semblance of accountability in governments and those in the corridors of power while promoting democracy and good governance through the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), based at The Hague in Netherlands.
The ICC was created to put an end to the presumption of impunity for the powerful, prosecute people for crimes of war, genocide and crimes against humanity but in practice, that’s not how it has played out. Strong states that employ violence against civilians have insulated themselves from the court’s jurisdiction. It’s only purported weak states for whom the appeal of the ICC as a political tool incentivises opening themselves up to jurisdiction. Rather than a weapon of the weak against the powerful, the court has mostly been used as a weapon of the powerful against weaker states.
The ICC has become notorious for its racial bias. It does not need a class in village idiocy to appreciate that the ICC is working with a template that is usually prescribed by the economically rich American and European nations whose similar genetic make-up is that of having a mental code of gangsterism.
The twin terrible forces have made the world believe that they are the paragons of democracy and that they are the champions in defending human rights, but a closer look will reveal that they are nothing more than hypocrites — wolves in sheep skin with a strong tendency of indicating left and turning right.
They have a lot of dirty and smelly skeletons in their cupboards but with the aid of a powerful and not so independent media, they have managed to churn out propaganda and portray themselves as the ones that have provided not only the brick and mortar but the ground too on which democracy and good governance’s foundations are erected.
Thus, the hypocritical West has used its media to perpetuate its lies and perhaps fool the world into believing that they are holier than thou as portrayed in their own media in the “he who pays the piper, calls the tune scenario”.
Through its media, where atrocities are committed on civilians by Western bullies as in the case of Libya and the Arab States the world is told of collateral damage — a term coined to deodorise their stinking acts and or simply an act of applying lipstick to a frog in an attempt to beautify it.
And the ICC looks aside as if collateral damage refers to damage caused to property and not killing of innocent civilians.
The selective application of the law by the ICC has exposed it to scathing criticism where it has been accused of going to bed with the West that continues to lie so that the coffers of ideological purity are kept full, lie in order to avoid accountability or conversely to seize the reins of accountability and turn their personal morality or religion into everyone’s legality or religiosity.
The ICC has therefore been tried and found guilty of willy-nilly flouting the real objectives of why it was created. It has been found guilty of being rigid, strongly biased and inflexible thus many African states are contemplating forming an African grown solution to Africa’s challenges.
That the ICC has been used as the West’s rod of anger towards African leaders who are very clear on what they want has been well documented. Since it was created in 2002, the International Criminal Court has publicly issued warrants for 36 people.
The list however, surprisingly consists of African men and one former Ivorian first lady Simone Gbagbo.
Their alleged crimes, at least according to the West and the ICC are serious. Bosco Ntaganda, a Congolese rebel leader, is about to go on trial for, among other things, alleged murder and rape of hundreds of civilians. Joseph Kony, the messianic Lord’s Resistance Army Commander, is charged with the abduction and enslavement of thousands of children in northern Uganda. Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Cote d’Ivoire, is accused of using security forces and militia to attack the opposition after a disputed election. The list goes on.
But equally shocking violations of international law have occurred elsewhere in the last decade. The death toll in the Syrian civil war continues to mount. The Islamic State is committing large-scale atrocities against ethnic Hazara and other Iraqi civilians. Rohingya refugees are risking death at sea to escape persecution and ethnic cleansing in Burma. And last month saw the anniversaries of both Uzbekistan’s 2005 Andijan Massacre and the cataclysmic violence that accompanied the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009.
The ICC’s seemingly single-minded geographic focus has led some to conclude that the ICC is just a weapon by the West to persecute African leaders and that it is hopelessly compromised by racial bias. The breakdown in relations between Africa and the ICC came to a head when Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for allegedly ordering mass atrocities in Darfur, travelled to South Africa to attend the African Union summit. And then, despite calls for his arrest and a court order barring him from leaving, he was allowed to go home.
South Africa, an ICC member state showed its solidarity with fellow African States after it refused to execute Bashir’s arrest warrant for the court’s legitimacy and further questions have been asked on whether ICC can mend its relationship with African governments and whether it will ever be a truly international criminal court.
It has been too clear that the court has been targeting African leaders, some of whom are known to have been critics of the powerful rich Western countries that have been known to be on a morally corrupt crusade to loot African resources. The ICC is a treaty organisation, which only has jurisdiction over the territory and nationals of its member states only when member states are either unable or unwilling to prosecute anyone domestically. What has to be pointed out however, is that the ICC working hand in glove with the West has been using African opposition leaders most of whom are known puppets of former colonial powers to “report” their governments.
On the other hand the UN Security Council can refer situations to the ICC, which is how the Libya and Sudan cases arose. But the real issue is the question on why hasn’t the ICC been able to exercise jurisdiction over any of the non-African atrocities listed above, atrocities committed by America and Europe?
It goes without saying that the big nations — America and the Nato nations are free to violate international law, to violate human rights with impunity. Since the ICC was founded, America invaded Iraq, Israel attacked Gaza and targeted a civilian population. So it seems the rules apply only to the weak.
It is therefore prudent for Africa to have its own home grown solutions to its challenges and shun the idea of having solutions prescribed by the West as has been the case where the ICC has refused to re-open the atrocities committed by the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the by the Rhodesians in Zimbabwe and so many other African countries.
President Mugabe has on a number of occassions said the ICC has no credibility in Africa, pointing out that it “seems to exist only for alleged offenders of the developing world, the majority of them Africans. The leaders of the powerful Western states guilty of international crime, like (George) Bush and (Tony) Blair, are routinely given the blind eye. Such selective justice has eroded the credibility of the ICC on the African continent.”
Online Reporter