The warrants further demonstrate why Gaddafi has lost all legitimacy and why he should go immediately. His forces continue to attack Libyans without mercy and this must stop.
(UK Foreign Minister William Hague, London Guardian, June 27, 2011)
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants on Monday for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi – accusing them of a battery of crimes against humanity in Libya’s hundred days civil war.
But, with all due respect to the UK foreign minister, what these warrants really demonstrate is that, since NATO bombs are proving incapable of bringing swift justice to Gaddafi, NATO leaders are resorting to the black hole of judicial proceedings to cover up this fecklessness.
What I find most troubling about this bombing campaign is the quizzical insouciance with which NATO is variously destroying Libya’s infrastructure and killing innocent Libyans all in a vain effort to put pressure on Gaddafi to leave.
(Kill Gaddafi already, The iPINIONS Journal, June 8, 2011)
Meanwhile, nothing demonstrates what an utter joke these arrest warrants are quite like Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir still living a care-free lifestyle despite the ICC issuing an arrest warrant three years ago – accusing him of genocide for orchestrating the mass killing of black Africans by Arab militias in the Darfur region of his country. For he has traveled since then with impunity throughout the Continent and, as if to show that he has powerful friends who not only accept but share his authoritarian way of governing, he’s currently on a state visit to China.
Al-Bashir was the first sitting head of state to have a warrant issued for his arrest. Gaddafi is now the second.
More to the point, though, here is what I wrote three years ago about the failure to arrest al-Bashir:
The United States has not ratified this treaty, which means that the only country that would even dare to arrest al-Bashir does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction… Therefore, this begs the question: What is the point of charging him if the ICC has no means to arrest him?
(ICC charging Bashir means nothing! The iPINIONS Journal, July 15, 2008)
Now here is what the BBC wrote six weeks ago (on May 17, 2011) about what this failure to arrest al-Bashir portends for Gaddafi:
Three years ago they approved a warrant for the arrest of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, on genocide charges in relation to Darfur. But with no police force of its own the court has been unable to detain him, and President Bashir has managed to travel to several African states which don’t recognise the ICC.
The same could happen with Col Gaddafi. Libyan officials dismissed the court even before the ICC prosecutor announced he was seeking his arrest, calling it irrelevant. They have mocked the court as being a creature of the Europeans which only pursues African leaders and officials.
ICC double standards
It is hardly surprising that, far from being cowered by ICC arrest warrants, al-Bashir and Gaddafi have reacted to them with unbridled contempt. But there’s no gainsaying their complaint that the ICC amounts to little more than a tool Europeans use to prosecute leaders of African countries, as well as those of small and relatively powerless countries like the former Yugoslavia. Indeed, Exhibit A in support of their complaint is the fact that no arrest warrants have been issued for Chinese leaders for their genocidal crackdown on Tibet’s Buddhist intifada in 2008, to say nothing of their notorious Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
Closer to al-Bashir’s home, the failure to issue arrest warrants for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad – whose crackdown of democratic protesters in Syria makes what Gaddafi is doing in Libya seem like a misdemeanor – is also evidence of the ICC’s double standards. (Incidentally, al-Assad made news in January when he said that the unrest facing Tunisia and Egypt would never happen in Syria. Boy are his words coming home to roost….)
But no European country, or even the mighty United States, would dare launch military strikes to protect Syrians from al-Assad. Because not only does Syria have a far greater ability to fight back; there’s also the more forbidding probability that military strikes there might draw in Iran and other countries in a greater war in the Middle East.
So here’s to this latest manifestation of the politically expedient defense of universal human rights, which is becoming a hallmark of the foreign policy of self-righteous Western countries.
Related commentaries:
Kill Gaddafi already
ICC charging Bashir…
Arresting Bashir?
China’s Buddhist intifada
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