On July the 14th, Luis Moreno Ocampo, serving as international war-crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) formally indicted Sudanese President Omar Bashir for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity against several Sudanese tribes.
Almost all commentators have mentioned that the ICC judges have signed all eleven warrants that Ocampo has requested since he was appointed prosecutor five years ago. Now the questions facing this action by Ocampo is whether it will jeopardize the peace talks or not, whether the judges will even sign this warrant, and whether the security council will refuse to intervene by not suspending the court action. As with the previous eleven requests, hopefully the ICC will also take the time to sign the arrest warrant against Bashir, even though the likelihood of its enforcement is said to be near zero.
At the time of this writing, another war criminal, also indicted for genocide committed more than 10 years ago in Sebrenitsa and Sarajevo is being tried before the ICC at the Hague. After eluding international justice for more than a decade, Mr. Radovan Karadzic claims that he had brokered a deal with Richard Holbrooke, former US Ambassador at the United Nation allowing him to escape future prosecution if he agreed to abandon politics and disappear. Once again commentators are asking the question, how could anybody would grant immunity to a man who brutally ended the lives of more than 18,000 people?
Ocampo indicted President Bashir for “masterminding and implementing” a plan to destroy some ethnic groups in Darfur; the use of government soldiers and Arab militia to “purposefully target civilians” belonging to those ethnic groups, and directly killing thousands of people and causing death of other many thousands.
“His motives,” Ocampo said, “were largely political, his alibi was counterinsurgency but his intent was genocide” He went on affirming that for over five years Bashir “organized destitution, insecurity, harassment of the survivors, rapes, hunger and fear.” against civilians after failing to defeat rebellion. Karadzic is being tried for similar fact: having planned, directed and let perpetrated a massacre.
In a separate case, from October 25 to 30, 2002, in order to counter an attempted coup d’état, Ange Patassé, then president of the African Central Republic called for help from other countries. He received assistance from Jean Pierre Bemba and Abdulaye Miskine, respectively chiefs rebels in the D.R. Congo and Chad.
While under the orders of Mr. Patassé and his military command, the troops sent by Bemba and Miskine are believed to have committed atrocities amounting to crimes against humanity. Ocampo indicted Bemba and Miskine for their troops’ misconduct in Bangui.
Again, the hope is that Ocampo acted in total fairness and that his indictment of these two gentlemen will result in their conviction after due process. A critical look, however, reveals some legitimate questions with regard to this indictment.
Bemba, who is currently detained at the Hague, is indicted for crimes perpetrated by his troops while under foreign military command. Yet, Patassé, who was commander-in-chief of his army, which also incorporated foreign troops, is not indicted for the same crimes. There is clearly a matter of responsibility in this case. It would be like holding president Musharaf responsible of misconduct of Pakistanis UN peacekeepers currently operating in the D.R.C. under UN command. Unless Bemba and Miskine were commanding Patassé’s army including their own troops, it is not clear why they should be held responsible of their troops’ misconduct while under a foreign army command.
In 1997, pushed by Rwanda and Uganda, Laurent Désiré Kabila started a rebellion against Mobutu in the D.R.C. Kabila did not have any army. He was used by Rwandan president Kagame and Ugandan president Museveni, who wanted Mobutu out of power in D.R.C. in order to achieve their own agendas.
After the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Rwandan Hutu, who are believed to have committed genocide fled in the millions into the D.R.C. On the other side, the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army of Joseph Kony rebelling against the Ugandan regime was also based in the D.R.C. The only way to get rid of those threats for both Rwanda and Uganda was to go after Mobutu by using Kabila, who at that time had abandoned all political ambition. Kabila was then able to march from Eastern D.R.C. to Kinshasa with an army composed almost entirely of Rwandan and Ugandan military, commanded directly by the Rwandan regime.
For the span of a year from the time Kabila took power in the D.R.C. James Kabarebe, currently Rwandan army general commander was the Congolese army general commander. Besides James Kabarebe, who commanded the army backing Kabila into D.R.C. another important figure was Officer Hyppolite Kanambe, a former Rwandan soldier known as Commander Hyppo who was believed to be the son of Kabila.
Today, commander Hyppo is called Joseph Kabila and is president of the D.R.C. Kabarebe and Commander Hyppo were two of the most powerful officers inside Laurent Kabila’s march to Kinshasa. One man was representing the Rwandan regime and the other was appearing as the king’s son. Under their joint command, hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees in the D.R.C. and many Congolese nationals were massacred in cold blood. Hundreds of thousands of females, including children as young as five years old and women as old as 70 years old were systematically raped, abused, mutilated or tortured. Millions of people have lost their lives either as a result of direct killing by Rwandan military or other militia supporting Kabila and his supporters, or by trying to defend themselves against that extermination campaign. This was not a war of liberation but a planned and organized campaign of Hutu extermination inside the D.R.C.
Like Bashir, President Kagame’s alibi for his intervention in the D.R.C. was to pursue genocide perpetrators and to prevent Hutu from reorganizing into a rebellion that could come back and commit another genocide. To this day, there are thousands of witnesses including direct victims who survived that campaign and proofs have been gathered. At least images like the followings can give an idea of what might have happen. Among others, we see what was left of the overpopulated refugee camps of Mugunga on November 16, 1997: dead body fields. Others who tried to escape had been pushed into a big river and drowned into it.
After he became president in D.R.C., Laurent Kabila wanted to distance himself from his Rwandan and Ugandan backers since the international community started asking questions about the disappearance of hundred of thousands of Hutu refugees in the D.R.C. He then asked them to go back to their countries. Soon after he was killed and replaced by his supposed son. It is clear that if he had lived he would have talked about what had happened. He certainly did not want to be accused of something he was not responsible of.
If Bemba, without being in command, can be indicted for the acts perpetrated by his troops while under foreign army command, how can any fair prosecutor pass over uninvestigated allegations placing Joseph Kabila, James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame at the center of the Hutu massacre in the D.R.C.?
For the same facts, with a total of over 300,000 victims, killed or injured, Mr. Bashir is indicted for genocide, crimes against humanity, murder, extermination, rapes, forcible transfer, torture, etc. For the same facts, with a total of approximately 20,000 victims, Radovan Karadzic is being tried for genocide.
Yet, Kabila president of the D.R.C.; Kabarebe Rwandan Army general commander and Kagame, president of Rwanda are let uninvestigated; and it is believed that these three men have planned, organized and executed a genocide killing or caused the death of more than three million people. Where is fairness in the ICC prosecution? Above all, where is fairness of the international community?
The Congolese genocide has completely been passed over just like it never happened; yet more than 3 million people lost their lives as a direct consequence of it. The reality is that those who are responsible of the Congolese genocide are still serving interests of the world industrial cartels financing many developed worlds’ financial systems.
Those who know what the D.R.C. represents in matter of natural resources, will understand why it is essential to keep this country under an organized chaos in order to exploit it to the maximum and in total illegality; while the Congolese people are led in total depravation. Imposing a non-Congolese individual as president seems to be a working formula in order to achieve such an evil plan.
While Mugabe was strongly criticized for literally forcing his re-election as president of Zimbabwe, the world should look back and notice that in 2006 the European Union did just that to the Congolese people. They organized a parody of election, which was intended to legitimize Joseph Kabila as president after he took over from his supposed father five years earlier. His opponent who is believed to have won that presidential election, even though there was fraud, is the one who Ocampo has indicted for alleged crime against humanity in the Central African Republic. More than what Mugabe did to Morgan Tsvangirai, Kabila did not hesitate to attack JP Bemba’s residence with heavy military artillery including rockets on August 20, 2006.
Without having any prejudice on whether or not J.P. Bemba is guilty of the crimes he is being accused of, many in the Congolese community sees his detention at the Hague as a maneuver intended to keep him away from the presidential election of 2011. Indeed, with an average of three years proceedings at the ICC before any sentencing, the timing is just perfect to assure Joseph Kabila, the world’s broker for the D.R.C. is re-conduction as head of country. It is a shame for the UN system and all developed countries responsible for or benefiting in one way or another from the Congolese chaos.
Unlike most commentators, the question I rather want to raise here is whether in the first place the action of ICC prosecutors is fair; in other words, whether they are not serving some international lobbies or political agendas. I am not being sympathetic to Bashir’s, or Karadzic who should face justice and be convicted if found guilty, but that beside these two, other peoples, including sitting presidents, have in the same way as president Bashir and Radovan Karadzic caused death to millions of people and harmed other millions through rapes, torture, forcible displacement of population, murder and extermination. Yet, these presidents are not only applauded for supposedly having embraced democracy but have even been several times guest of the White House, the Elysée and many other governments.
I strongly stand for the presumption of innocence in favor of every suspect until found guilty after a due process by a court of law. I do not know how much evidence the ICC has gathered against president Bashir or Karadzic, in order to indict them for genocide, murder or instigation of murder, rape and other crimes against humanity. What I see is the similarity of facts between Bashir, Karadzic and other African presidents. The same facts leading to the same conclusions, if the ICC system is fair, it should equally have investigated and certainly indicted the other presidents who are accused of even more atrocities than president Bashir and Karadzic.
I believe everyone agrees that all we have here for analysis is the news in any form that we have seen, read or heard about all these international crimes scenes, be it in Sebrenitza, Sarajevo, Darfur, Rwanda, D.R. Congo, Central African Republic, etc. From the news that we presume is authentic we do analysis and draw conclusions. Some of us, have seen or touched the reality of those international crime scenes, but most of us rely on what the mass media brings to us. Also, with this kind of material, many will agree with me that analogy, sometimes not the best approach, seems to be the perfect analytical method here.
-- Jeff Mukadi is author of “The Black Oyabun – Destiny of a Lost Child”, coming soon at American Book Publishing.
