Editor,

RE: "Human rights violations should receive equal treatment” (The New Times, January 28).

What all this confirms, not just implies, is that justice is neither objective blind, nor equal—and has never been.

Where you come from, and who you are, determine whether you will be pursued and even the outcome of any judicial processes.

The more powerful your country and the higher your position in that country’s establishment, the less likely you will ever be a target of international judicial pursuit (unless you are from a country with a government that finds itself at loggerheads with western powers).

Conversely, anyone – no matter the absence of any reasonable case against them – can be hauled before politicised activist prosecutors and judges and be convicted on the flimsiest of evidence, as long as they are from weak states without powerful international protectors.

That is the reality of the world we live in; might makes right in every sense, including through the abuse of judicial institutions and processes.

Mwene Kalinda