Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir must have his day in court but not in the ICC, which is manipulated by the West, says Shannon Ebrahim.
Johannesburg - The International Criminal Court (ICC) is being dumped by Africa, having been accused of selective justice and being manipulated by Western powers to pursue their own interests. There may be some justification for that.
This is not to say that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is not guilty of genocide in Darfur and should be immune from prosecution. We are not blind to the fact that for years Bashir sent out his Janjaweed militias to carry out a scorched-earth policy in Darfur – raping village after village of women and girls, and burning their huts to the ground. The civilians of Darfur were brutalised into submission, and for that Bashir must have his day in court.
This is also not to let South Africa off the hook for facilitating Bashir’s exit from the country when a judge of the high court ordered him to remain in the country until the matter had been heard. We flouted the ruling of our own judge, and also our obligations to the ICC.
What Africa is saying, and I am in agreement, is that the ICC as it is constituted, should no longer have jurisdiction over Africa. All UN member states need to be signatories for there to be universal justice. Otherwise we should rely on an empowered and well-financed African Court of Justice and Human Rights.
What concerns Africa the most is the manipulation of the ICC by European powers which have at times sought to neutralise African leaders that exercise independence in the interests of Africans, and who fail to protect Western interests.
I would go so far as to argue that true African nationalists who display the tenets of “Lumumbism” – the independent policy positions of the DRC’s first African leader Patrice Lumumba – are targets to be neutralised. This is obviously not the hidden agenda of the ICC as an institution, but it is what the former colonial powers use the ICC to achieve.
France is the perfect example. France has sought to control West African countries in the most patriarchal of fashions. France needs to ensure that West African leaders remain French patriots, as all the wealth of the francophone countries in West Africa is held in the French Treasury.
If a new generation of nationalist West African leaders were to attempt to withdraw their wealth from the French Treasury, this would have serious ramifications for France.
In Francophone countries 50 percent of the income from any transactions that their governments do is held by the Central Bank in France. In essence, this is a way to keep Francophone countries dependent.
France has a vested interest in ensuring that the leaders of Ivory Coast and other French-speaking African countries toe the line in terms of their economic policies. They must not suggest launching their own currency – because that would be the end of the franc in West Africa.
France’s agenda in Ivory Coast, from 1990 until today, has been to impose their puppet – Alassane Ouattara – as the country’s leader. The greatest threat to this goal was the emergence of Laurent Gbagbo, who won the elections in 2000 with 58 percent.
Just as Lumumba had done exactly 40 years before him in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Gbagbo exposed his nationalist agenda – setting about to break away from the former colonial power’s economic stranglehold.
Gbagbo, like Lumumba had done, wanted economic independence for his people. He spoke of nationalising the cocoa and coffee industry. Gbagbo opened investment to China, South Africa and the US, and announced that Ivory Coast would break from the franc. He refused to maintain a French national as chief of staff as his predecessors had. He also told France he didn’t want their military bases.
The French used Ouattara to orchestrate two coups in 2001 and 2002, both of which failed. To pressure Gbagbo, France closed the doors of the French banks operating in the country which controlled more than 50 percent of the banking sector, making it impossible for Gbagbo to pay salaries.
In 2002, the French then resorted to arming a rebellion against Gbagbo.
Ultimately the ICC became the vehicle through which to neutralise Gbagbo. Having bombed Gbagbo’s palace, the French justice minister and the newly imposed justice minister of Ivory Coast went to the Hague in October 2011 to ask that Gbagbo be transferred to the ICC, where he languished for 15 months without charge.
The ICC, which is primarily funded by France, Germany and the EU, used the 15 months to try to collect evidence against Gbagbo. In June 2013, the decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber was that there was not enough evidence to send Gbagbo to trial.
Instead of releasing him, the ICC set out for another seven months, even under an African chief prosecutor, trying to find evidence against him. Gbagbo was denied bail nine times. Gbagbo is supposed to be tried this year, but the trial date keeps being postponed and now it is November. The reason being to keep him remanded until elections have taken place in Ivory Coast in October.
The travesty of justice surrounding Gbagbo’s case is just one example of why Africa doesn’t believe in the ICC any more. It no longer wants the ICC to do the dirty work of the former colonial powers.
We are capable of trying war criminals in Africa. Former president of Chad Hissene Habre, who is charged with crimes against humanity, has been living in exile in Senegal. He will be tried for those crimes by a Senegalese court next month.
There are those who want to remain in the ICC, believing it acts as a deterrent to leaders who may otherwise act with impunity. But the tide of opinion is swinging away from the ICC the more it is seen to be manipulated by Western interests.
* Shannon Ebrahim is Independent Media’s Foreign Editor.
The Star