Africa should not expect to get justice from ICC

Editor, REFER to Sunny Ntayombya’s article, “Bashir vs. ICC: Where is the African justice?” (The New Times, June 17). To Mr Ntayombya, after very many extremely doggy reports of the UN Group of Experts and similar UN commissions of inquiry, do you still have any confidence in the trustworthiness of any of their outputs? As a lawyer I would have thought you would apply the doctrine of “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus”, or at any rate be very skeptical about the veracity of any of their reports, including on Darfur. Whether you detested him or not while he still lived, we now know, for instance, that Muammar Gaddafi never issued Viagra to his troops and orders to rape the women of Benghazi or to indiscriminately kill the citizens of the rebellious eastern Cyrenaica regions of Libya—the excuses used to get UN Security Council approval that was then stretched by the West as a license to go after him and completely destroy his country. If they lied in these instances, why would we be sure they are telling the truth in any other? The same, remember, is the case with Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction that we were told by the Americans, that they had cast-iron evidence of their existence and knew their exact locations east, west, and all over the place. Yes, quite possibly President Al-Bashir’s forces and allied militia have committed atrocities in various parts of Sudan. But I wouldn’t stake anything on the veracity of the report on which the UNSC decided to refer his case to an entity which some of those making the referral do not themselves recognize and which they would never allow any of their own citizens, let alone political leaders—present or past—to be referred to. Selective justice which targets only the weak is itself injustice, for really justice is supposed to treat everyone indifferently, no matter how powerful they are. It becomes even more unjust and totally illegitimate the moment it becomes an instrument of the powerful, who can wield it as a one-way weapon against the weak that can never be able to do the same against the powerful. The powerful can use it to oppress you without any fear that they could themselves ever find self the targets of the same so-called court. This is not justice; this is pseudo judicial terrorism. Mwene Kalinda

Opinions

Africa should not expect to get justice from ICC