by GLEN FORD
“A racist, biased, colonialist court has no credibility.”
The International Criminal Court, a dispenser of one-sided justice to a select group of Africans targeted by the U.S. and its allies, “violates the letter and spirit of the UN Charter, principles of legality, and fair and equal justice for all without discrimination.” That was the sentiment of many of the 100 or so lawyers, law students and human rights activists who gathered in Montreal, Quebec, for a conference under the heading: “International justice for whom?” This Third International Conference on the Defense of International Criminal Law found little to defend in the conduct of the ICC.
The International Criminal Court is a strange legal animal. Despite its global mandate to prosecute persons for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, the ICC has pursued indictments only in Africa, where it has charged 29 people in cases involving eight countries. The organization, based in The Hague, Netherlands, purports to fight against a “culture of impunity,” yet is prohibited from prosecuting crimes committed prior to July 2002, the date of its founding under the Treaty of Rome. Thus, hundreds of years of European slavery, genocide, and every other conceivable form of human rights atrocity are beyond the reach of the ICC. Europe is effectively granted impunity from centuries of crimes in Africa and around the globe.
Countries that are not signatories to the founding treaty, such as the United States, remain outside its jurisdiction, yet cases can be referred to the ICC for prosecution by the United Nations Security Council, where the U.S. is by far the most influential player. The ICC’s former chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, actively sought to enlist the “special forces” and “rare and expensive capabilities” of the U.S. to enforce ICC arrest warrants, and U.S. “observers” take part in most high-level ICC parlays.
“The ICC has pursued indictments only in Africa, where it has charged 29 people in cases involving eight countries.”
“African states did not contemplate that the administration of justice at the ICC, in particular within its first decade of existence, would be discriminatory, selective justice and focused totally on Africa,” said Chief Charles A. Taku, a traditional leader from Cameroon who is also legal counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the African Court on Human Rights and Peoples Rights in Arusha. The ICC has turned out to be “a tool of imperialism,” said Taku.
Selective, or discriminatory, justice is no justice at all. The West – meaning Europe’s former colonial powers and the U.S. – is allowed to posture and pontificate about “fighting impunity,” while the ICC’s exclusive prosecution of Africans gives the impression that “Blacks are inherently criminal and have a propensity to kill each other,” said Taku.
Black Agenda Report for more