Africa News blog
African business, politics and lifestyle
Putting Africa on trial?
Look down the list of the cases the International Criminal Court is pursuing – Congo, Central African Republic, Darfur, Uganda – and it doesn’t take long to spot the connection.
Of the dozen arrest warrants the court has issued, all have been against African rebels or officials. On Monday, the court begins its first trial - of Thomas Lubanga, accused of recruiting child soldiers to wage a gruesome ethnic war in northeastern Congo. Earlier this month, former Congolese rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba was in court for a decision on whether to confirm charges of ordering mass rape to terrorise civilians in the Central African Republic.
The judges are also deciding whether to indict their first head of state, Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused by the court’s prosecutor of instigating genocide and other war crimes in Darfur. All those being pursued by the prosecutor reject the accusations against them.
There is no doubt there were atrocities in all the conflicts in question – families, villages and countries scarred for ever by murders, rapes, mutilations, kidnappings and burnings.
The question is why the court is only targeting conflicts in Africa, which may have a higher proportion of troubles than other continents, but certainly has no monopoly on evil. Ongoing or recent conflicts elsewhere include Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia-Georgia, Israel-Palestinians and Sri Lanka among others.
“We have the feeling that this court is chasing Africa,” Benin’s president, Thomas Boni Yayi, commented last year of the moves to prosecute Sudanese President Bashir. Boni Yayi is no maverick. He is the leader of a peaceful pro-Western country with a record of democracy as good as any on the continent.
One explanation for the ICC’s focus on Africa could be that justice systems on the continent are not in a position to pursue those accused of war crimes.
It hardly seems like common Africans are crying out, “too much justice! Lay off our war criminals.”
Instead the opposite is true. We are thirsty for justice. If someone was giving out gifts do you think the recipients would start complaining, “why aren’t you giving out gifts to others? You are unfair.”
We wish we had justice in our local courts, but we don’t trust them. If anything we complain that the international community and courts don’t do enough–not that they are doing too much.