situations that are either of a similar nature or that are perceived to be worse.

It is striking to see how the gaze of international justice has suddenly become an exclusive affair over the happenings in only one continent; certainly not the most turbulent of places at the moment, especially when one considers the conflict situation in the Middle East.

In more than a decade of its existence, the ICC has made 28 indictments and, as it were, all the indictees happen to be Africans and drawn from eight African countries.

Not without cause African sensitivities have been aroused even among those Africans deemed to be most sympathetic to Western influence. Nationalists and Pan-Africanists are evidently riled over matters of sovereignty and self-determination, while liberalists and globalists find nothing too liberal or global in the conduct of the ICC.

In this essay this writer will not only argue further over the flawed nature of the ICC, following up on last week’s arguments, but will mainly focus on the views of others who have put their opinions in the public domain.

When colonialism was taking root in Africa in the 1880s, a Scottish missionary by the name Alexander Murdoch Mckay had this to say: “In former years, the universal aim was to steal Africans from Africa.” He was of course referring to the murderous slave trade. Continued Mckay: “Today the determination of Europe is to steal Africa from the Africans.”

It would appear the ICC has become the latest European creation to destroy African pride and identity, smuggling Africans out of the continent under the banner of international justice, sometimes with complicit approval from other Africans, only to humiliate these our people through show trials carried out in Western territories — all often televised to portray the supremacist image of a civilised Europe taming the monstrous barbarians from the Dark Continent.

The ICC is nothing more than a Western tool meant to humiliate and dominate African leaders in order to make it easier for the West to destabilise the continent. A destabilised Africa is easier not only to dominate but also to exploit, something of imperialist necessity when one looks at how the continent is blessed with natural resources.

The recently concluded AU summit unanimously agreed that the ICC indictments have a destabilising effect on the continent, and that the otherwise noble intention of combating war crimes has been hijacked and replaced by a sinister “racist agenda.”

Through the ICC Africa has been exposed to overzealous evangelism by Western NGO activists — themselves often handily assisted by the African donor-mongering community that masquerades as “the civic society.”

The continent has become a victim of what appears to be clear racial stereotyping by the West, and no doubt Western foreign policy goals are being promoted and pursued in the name of the ICC — itself nobly wearing the glorious cover of international criminal justice.

One can look at Laurent Gbabo of the Ivory Coast, or at the slain ex-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and the link between Western foreign policy goals and ICC indictments becomes glaringly clear.

The role of France in both indictments stinks to high heavens.
In explaining the political nature of international tribunals that preceded his most favoured ICC, South African judge Richard Goldstone had this to say:

“The problem with the UN Security Council is that it says no in the case of Cambodia, Mozambique, Iraq and other places where terrible war crimes have been committed, but yes in the case of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. That is a political way of deciding where international justice should be meted out.”

One can look at the post-World War II Nuremburg tribunal — an ad hoc one-sided tribunal that blatantly criminalised only atrocities that were attributable to the losing side, overwhelmingly paying a blind eye to more egregious war crimes carried out by the victors. The war itself was a grand genocide that claimed no less than 20 million lives, yet history has been tailor-made to exclusively talk of 6 million largely Jewish lives lost to the excesses of the Nazis and their leader Adolf Hitler.

Goldstone continued, “There has long been a concern that these tribunals ‘politicise justice’ . . . It is noteworthy that no ad hoc tribunals were established to investigate war crimes committed by any of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council or those nations these powerful states might wish to protect.”

This is precisely why the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq has not been a subject of ICC indictments or investigations. It is exactly why the massacred hundreds of thousands of Afghans will never qualify of be victims of gruesome war crimes. The perpetrator of their torment is a leading permanent member of the UN Security Council and is backed by kowtowing lapdog allies fully enjoying the protection of the master bully.

Commenting on the link between the ICC and the United States, Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani said: “The fact of mutual accommodation between the world’s only super power and an international institution struggling to get its bearings is clear if we take into account the four (of the 8) countries whereby the ICC (has carried out) its investigations: Sudan, Central African Republic, Uganda and DRC.”

He argued that all these countries happened to be places where the US had no objection to the ICC actions. Mamdani further highlighted how the ICC has paid no attention to the alleged atrocities carried out by the Ugandan Defence Forces while keenly pursuing alleged war crimes by the rebel group LRA and its highly demonised leader Joseph Kony.

In the countries where rebels like Kony happen to be pro-West or pro-US it is the government forces and officials that are haunted by ICC investigations; and Sudan is a classic example.

Uganda and Rwanda have been arming and training murderous militias killing millions of innocent civilians in the DRC, and at one time the militia acts attracted the intervention of Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia fighting on the DRC government side, while Uganda and Rwanda fought on the side of the militias. The United States subsequently sanctioned Zimbabwe as punishment for derailing the US agenda in the DRC. The ICC has of course not dared disappoint the US by investigating Uganda and Rwanda over their links with the murderous militias.

While Mamdani argues that the ICC has turned “into a Western court to try African crimes against humanity,” it must be noted that the ICC is still selective in its approach to international crimes even within Africa – the only continent in which international war crimes are carried out, at least by ICC definition.

There is no doubt that the ICC is not driven by the need for international justice but by the usual broader external factors characteristic of international affairs.

President Al-Bashir of Sudan may or may not have a case to answer in relation to the Darfur crisis, but the motivation of ex-ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo was unquestionably more politically oriented than it was justice driven.

Gaddafi was himself a victim of gross Nato war crimes, and when he was calling out to the world for the intervention of the international justice system, he was instantly replied by a swift ICC indictment over what Western leaders called “an intention to carry out a genocide” in Benghazi.

To many the ICC has become nothing more than a regime change tool meant to prop up Western puppets as leaders of African governments. Sadly for the ICC and its funders and directors in the West, the timing for promoting puppet politics in Africa could not be worse. Political events in Zimbabwe, Kenya and, to an extent, South Africa, all point to a radicalising Africa asserting itself against every form of Western domination.

Peace researcher Ramesh Thakur, who is also an ex-vice rector of the United Nations University, summarised the current consensus on the ICC by saying:

“A troubling issue is how an initiative of international criminal justice meant to protect the vulnerable people from brutal national rulers has managed to be subverted into an instrument of power against vulnerable countries. A court meant to embody and pursue universal justice is in practice reduced to imposing selective justice of the West against the rest.”

Judge Richard Goldstone explained in 2005 that it was just “a coincidence” that all “cases have come from Africa.” Then it was only a handful of cases involving four African countries. Today it is almost 30 African indictments involving eight African countries and the “coincidence” continues unabated.

The “coincidence” is despite the fact that the then ICC prosecutor, Moreno Ocampo, had by 2006 received 1 733 communications over war crimes from disgruntled people in the USA, UK, France and Germany – mainly over war crimes carried out by the West in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as those carried out by Israel in Gaza. That figure was by Ocampo’s own admission 60 percent of the total number of similar communications received from elsewhere across the world at the time.

After last week’s instalment titled “ICC flawed by design” this writer was inundated with comments over the ICC, among them being one comment seemingly borrowed from Ocampo’s misplaced argument that he only responded to “self-referrals” and to “referrals” by the UN Security Council in the case of Sudan.

That argument is nonsensical when one looks at how the same prosecutor ignored the 1 733 cries over war crimes carried out by the funders of the court that employed him.

The argument is also completely flawed when one looks at the pressure exerted by the ICC on Uganda, the DRC and Kenya before these countries “referred” themselves for ICC investigations. The so-called self-referrals were in fact rubber stamping gestures to the demands of the ICC, voluntary as they might appear on the surface.

The US Congressional Research Services acknowledged that the ICC had opened the Ugandan and DRC investigations using “its discretionary powers.” That is so much for “self-referrals.”

Human Rights Watch also noted that “the office of the prosecutor actively sought the referrals in the DRC and Uganda.”

In fact the so-called “self-referrals” are no more than covers for blatant directives directly carried out by the ICC — often on the backdrop of threats of withdrawal of Western aid.

If the will of those reported to have made “self-referrals” was so important, why are the same countries’ appeals for withdrawal of the same charges being denied or ignored?

Uganda has for a long time called for the withdrawal of charges against Kony, preferring to deal with the matter under Uganda’s domestic law, and so has Kenya over its six citizens charged after the 2007 post-election violence.

Why does the ICC not respect the will of the complainants by allowing these countries to deal with these matters within their own jurisdictions as requested even by the African Union?

What about the hundreds of thousands of communications received by the ICC over war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza? Don’t they warrant an ICC investigation? Can they not be pursued to at least secure Ocampo’s idea of “self-referrals?”

It is time Africa woke up to machinations of re-colonisation and imperial domination. The ICC is one hell of an institution that Africa must discredit, reject and abandon with a sense of uttermost pride.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.

You Might Also Like

Comments

Take our Survey

We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey