There is little doubt that the South African government violated the law by letting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir leave the country. In the wake of the controversy, however, it has been made clear that many South Africans sympathise with the view of the African Union that the body which issued the warrant for al-Bashir’s arrest – the International Criminal Court – is racist. Is this view justified? By REBECCA DAVIS.
The ICC has received more than 9,000 complaints about alleged crimes in more than 139 countries, yet its singular focus seems to be on Africa. All the countries where the ICC has opened investigations to date are on the African continent.
“At a time when there is conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, and when the armies of many Western nations are getting up to all sorts of bad things around the globe, to have a war crimes court which only investigates blacks really is as perverse as it would be to have a court in Britain that investigated black burglaries and ignored white ones,” Brendan O’Neill wrote in 2012 in The Telegraph, a normally conservative British newspaper.
Taken at face value, it’s not hard to see why the AU has been a vocal opponent of the ICC’s indictments. Despite appearances, the ICC doesn’t only seek out African war crimes to investigate. It is also undertaking preliminary investigations in countries like Colombia and Afghanistan. Even if the court did decide to open investigations in these countries, however, it would still face the charge that it never wants to prosecute rich and powerful Western nations. Where is Tony Blair’s indictment? critics ask. Where is George W Bush’s?
“At a time when there is conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, and when the armies of many Western nations are getting up to all sorts of bad things around the globe, to have a war crimes court which only investigates blacks really is as perverse as it would be to have a court in Britain that investigated black burglaries and ignored white ones,” Brendan O’Neill wrote in 2012 in The Telegraph, a normally conservative British newspaper.
Taken at face value, it’s not hard to see why the AU has been a vocal opponent of the ICC’s indictments. Despite appearances, the ICC doesn’t only seek out African war crimes to investigate. It is also undertaking preliminary investigations in countries like Colombia and Afghanistan. Even if the court did decide to open investigations in these countries, however, it would still face the charge that it never wants to prosecute rich and powerful Western nations. Where is Tony Blair’s indictment? critics ask. Where is George W Bush’s?
The latter question is easily answered: the US, despite sounding off about South Africa’s failure to arrest Omar al-Bashir, has not ratified the 1998 Rome Statute – the treaty founding the International Criminal Court. The USA’s refusal to do so is understood as stemming partly out of concern that its foreign troops would face prosecution, and partly out of a characteristic Bush-administration refusal to compromise US sovereignty in matters of justice. Read more
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