By Farouk Araie
Cape Town - The ICC has issued an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
South Africa’s desire to quit the International Criminal Court (ICC) is understandable.
The ICC’s preamble to the Rome Statute clearly states: “The most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished”.
Without African support the Rome Statute might never have been adopted.
The ICC was presented with 9 000 complaints about war crimes in 139 countries.
It investigated and indicted 36 Africans in eight countries on the continent. It is this act of selective prosecution that will ultimately cause the collapse of the ICC.
It has chosen to conveniently ignore the massive war crimes of all the major powers, and their subservient allies.
A classic example is the bloody conflict in Syria and Iraq, genocidal wars, planned and executed by all the five major powers of the UN security council.
Violations of international human norms are very often in the eyes of the beholder.
Today, more than 20 nations have been, and are, actively involved in crimes against humanity, which have taken millions of lives, while the ICC remains in a selective political coma.
The US dropped more bombs in Vietnam than had been dropped by all sides in all previous wars in history.
Today’s major and smaller powers are all involved in mass violence, torture, violations of fundamental human rights, the mistreatment of human beings, the use of outlawed cluster bombs, drone attacks that are against international law, the bombing of hospitals.
Has the ICC indicted any of these powers for crimes against humanity?
If the ICC is to survive in the turbulent years ahead it must fearlessly prosecute all those who are currently destroying humanity on a global basis.
It was Judge Henry Jackson, the chief prosecuting officer at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders, who said: “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
Selective morality and prosecution cannot be condoned while the world becomes a shooting gallery for the superpowers and their political minions.
Any nation that violates international law must be held accountable.
Cape Times
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