via AU leaders seek licence to kill and oppress – The Zimbabwe Independent by Gwynne Dyer October 25, 2013
Surprise of the week: the club of African presidents (aka the African Union) has held a special meeting and declared that African presidents should be immune from prosecution for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes while they are in office.
They are taking this step, they say, because the International Criminal Court (ICC) is unfairly targeting Africans: all eight cases currently under investigation are about crimes committed in African countries.
“We would love nothing more than to have an international forum for justice and accountability, but what choice do we have when we get only bias and race-hunting at the ICC?” said President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya (who by a strange coincidence is currently under indictment by the ICC). “The ICC . . . stopped being the home of justice the day it became the toy of declining imperial powers.”
The AU is not demanding perpetual immunity for its presidents. It only wants to reject the evil meddling of Western imperialists, and to keep African heads of state free from prosecution while they are still in office. What could be more reasonable than that?
If the AU gets its way, the victims of current African leaders who commit crimes against humanity will only have to wait until they retire to see justice done. True, some African leaders stay in power for a long time — for example, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (32 years), Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola (32 years), Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (33 years) and Paul Biya of Cameroon (29 years) — but Africans are patient people.
Except that they may not be that patient any more. Twenty years ago the accusation that the ICC is just an instrument of imperialist oppression and Western racism would still have played well in Africa, but the audience has got a lot more sophisticated. The AU’s modest proposal has been greeted with an outcry all over the continent, from Africans who know that their leaders can be just as cynical and self-serving as leaders anywhere else.
The most eloquent protest came from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the 82-year-old hero of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. “Those leaders seeking to skirt the (ICC) are effectively looking for a licence to kill, maim and oppress their own people without consequence,” he said. “They simply vilify the institution as racist and unjust, as Hermann Goering and his fellow Nazi defendants vilified the Nuremberg tribunals following World War II.”
So is the ICC really a racist organisation that unfairly targets African states? The fact that all eight cases currently being prosecuted involve African countries certainly sounds suspicious.
So does the fact that three of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which has the right to refer cases to the ICC, have not accepted the court’s jurisdiction themselves. But things are more complicated than they seem.
One hundred and twenty-two countries have already ratified the Treaty of Rome that created the ICC in 1998, including two-thirds of the countries in Africa and all the countries in Latin America except Cuba and Nicaragua. The chief prosecutor of the ICC is an African (Fatou Bensouda of Gambia), as are five of its 18 judges.
Four of the eight cases now before the court (Uganda, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic) were referred to the ICC by the African countries themselves. Two were begun by the ICC’s chief prosecutor (Kenya and Ivory Coast). And only two of the seven new cases under consideration (Afghanistan, Georgia, Guinea, Colombia, Honduras, Korea and Nigeria) are in African countries.
This is not a conspiracy against Africa, nor is the AU defending African rights. It is an exclusive club of African presidents attempting to get its own members, the leaders of Sudan and Kenya, off the hook, and to protect the rest of the membership from any future legal proceedings.
As former UN secretary general Kofi Annan said, it would be a “badge of shame” for Africa if they get away with it, but they may not. They can easily dismiss the opinions of the “international community” (whatever that is), but they may find it harder to ignore the indignation they are arousing among their own citizens.
Dyer is a London-based freelance journalist.
COMMENTS
AFRICAN UNDERTAKERS(AU) PVT LTD!
Can someone tell me why the USA is not a signatory to the ICC statute? Also can I be educated why countries who are not signatories to the ICC statute rejoice at the goings on at that “court”.
I have stressed myriads of times before the AU , SADC and other regional blocks are not working to improve the lot of us Africans . Instead they shout racism but behind everyones back they are all involved in shady deals with the big corporations. Lets get real all these thugs must be shamed from now on. Personally the AU should be disbanded and an African independent watchdog should be formed to police the activities of all African leaders and report them to the UN . This is the only way to have a true indicator of African leader committment to proper governance.
AU, SADC are clubs for the Despotic leaders of Africa. Africa should hang it’s communal head in shame in not removing them and World should be ashamed is allowing this to have progressed to this stage.
Yes, but the UN will do nothing… and without Zim being a source of oil, the West has little interest in the internals of Zim, the corruption of ZANUPF, or making investments that would be stolen by ZANUPF.
That said, the EU and West has been the source of the vast majority of the charity and benevolence for the people, especially those in Zim. Of course, ZANUPF has stolen much of that, not only for putting directly into their own pockets, but using it for political purposes. In fact, does anyone else recall ZANUPF relabeling aid packets of mealie to make it appear as though ZANUPF was the source for supplying the people. Now, they insist on controlling the distributions from the NGOs, so that only ZANUPF members benefit… all for political payback, and with zero interest in the welfare of the people. A government of the people would not allow such, but the Mugabe regime sanctions it.
Yes, the leaders in the AU and SAU, with rare exceptions, are willing to do whatever necessary to remain in power, and beyond being held accountable for their collusion, intimidation, bribery, corruption, and violence, including murder and genocide. They must remain in power because once out of the protection of their forces, they are vulnerable.
Of course, once out of this life, they are helpless in the hands of God, and there they have zero protection from His perfect justice for their atrocities… and their sentence is unimaginable and eternal. Can you hear the screams of those despots already there. Mugabe will join them soon.
Guys. We willhave our day even if not at Hague court. Cos there is a snakepit at our new chikurubi. Cobras black mambas love eating vermin
Mugarbage should be arrested and his old, tired, wrinkled arse dragged to the Hague for hanging!
That the AU leaders make a bid for immunity from prosecution by the ICC while in power is driven by their proven abilities not to get out of power in the first place. Its motivation enough to improve on the increasingly sophisticated methods of hanging onto power. Mugabe’s recent hattrick really impressed the dismal lot.