All the good intentions

CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
6/27-7/3/2011



On Mar. 10 this year, Inquirer columnist Ceres P. Doyo wrote in her “Human Face” corner a piece entitled, “From Nuremburg to The Hague.”

In it she praised the International Criminal Court (ICC) to high heavens and had only paeans for BSA III for signing the Rome Statute last Feb. 28, with another symbolic signing on Mar. 7, before the instrument was to be transmitted for ratification to the Senate which, at that time, had a meeting with ICC president and judge Sang-Hyun Song.

Doyo’s point is summed up by her ending: “(The) ICC is becoming the international community’s instrument of choice in the global fight against impunity.  ‘Only nine days ago the Security Council took an unprecedented, unanimous decision to refer the situation in Libya to the ICC,’ Song announced.

“‘Even all the non-state parties on the Council, such as China, Russia, the United States and India, voted in favor of the referral.’  This, he said, was a strong expression of the world community’s growing trust in the ICC.  Again, I say, no to impunity, yes to ICC.”

Who is lying …
Russia has since regretted its qualified abstention to the “No Fly Zone” resolution of the UN Security Council and issued this statement: “It is completely clear that the actions undertaken by the coalition are going far beyond the aims” of a UN Security Council resolution as NATO bombings have killed over 700 civilians (including the youngest Gaddafi sons and three grandchildren, and scores of Libyan rebels in friendly fire mishaps) while it debunked charges of Gaddafi atrocities against his own people based on Russian satellite monitoring.

Five months into the conflict, the issues also being raised now are the atrocities being committed by anti-Gaddafi forces together with NATO against many Libyans who have supported their nation’s sovereignty and leader.

Time has helped demonstrate who is lying and who is telling the truth, as NATO and its rebel puppets have failed to show evidence of those atrocities while their murders continue to be reported even in Western media.


The record of the ICC as a body purportedly organized to mete out transnational justice is a failed one.  From its handling of the Yugoslavian war crimes issues to its indictment of Sudan’s sitting President Omar Al-Bashir, the ICC has shown itself to be subservient to Western diktats, which are all discriminatory and devious to say the least.

Guilty!
To see this side of the picture, all we need is to read the voices of dissent to such ICC actions, such as Diana Johnstone in her Counterpunch article “What does the ICC stand for? – The Imperialist Crime Cover-up:” “When NATO bombs a country to unseat a leader, the targeted leader must be treated like a common criminal.

“His place cannot be at the negotiating table, but behind bars.

“An international indictment handily transforms NATO’s military aggression into a police action to arrest ‘an indicted war criminal’--an expression that evacuates the presumption of ‘innocent until proven guilty’… This is a familiar pattern.”

Johnstone continues, “On Mar. 24, 1999, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia in support of armed Albanian rebels in Kosovo.

“Two months later, in mid-May, as the bombing intensified against Serbia’s infrastructure, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Louise Arbour, issued an indictment against Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity.

“All but one of the alleged ‘crimes against humanity’ took place in Kosovo during the chaos caused precisely by the NATO bombing.

“On Mar. 31, 2011, NATO began bombing Libya, and this time the International Criminal Court was even faster.  And the charges were even less substantial.  Ocampo said that there was evidence that Gaddafi personally ordered attacks on ‘innocent Libyan civilians.'  (Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor at the ICC in The Hague)

“In Libya as in the Kosovo war, the accusations are those made by armed rebels supported by NATO, with no discernable trace of independent neutral investigation.”

Kangaroo Court
Equally damning an indictment of the ICC comes from the African continent, as the late Olley Maruma of South Africa’s Southern Times wrote “ICC--Western Kangaroo Court” in Mar. 2009 about the ICC indictment of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, ballyhooed as the first indictment ever against a sitting president.

He said: “In Africa, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague is considered by many to be a Western kangaroo court set up to hound, jail and silence African and Third world leaders who refuse to submit to the grip of Western hegemony and domination.  The court's recent indictment of President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, has only provided more evidence to give credence to this view…”

The ICC indicted Al-Bashir on ten counts, including human rights abuses, murder and genocide in what is called the Second Sudanese Civil War pitting rebel forces in the South, the SPLA, against the government in the North.  Rebel arms, of course, came from the US which had its eye on Southern Sudan’s oil.

The ICC was heavily lambasted by the African Union over this indictment of one of its own, a sitting president of a member country, and, as a result, 30 African countries have started the move to withdraw from the ICC.
The objections of the African Union put the ICC in an embarrassing spot when put to the test in 2009, particularly during an Arab summit in Doha, as no country had taken any move to implement the ICC order.

Good intentions
Nicaraguan diplomat and revolutionary former Maryknoll priest, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, when he was president of the United Nations General Assembly, described the Al-Bashir indictment as “absurd and politically motivated."

D’Escoto Brockmann had a memorable advice to the ICC to gain credibility: “…it would be important to begin by indicting people from powerful nations, not to pick on the smaller ones.”

For sure, the ICC has never looked into massive civilian deaths from US and NATO bombings -- whether in Yugoslavia, Iraq or, now, in Libya.


Maybe the Filipina ex-convent girl slash columnist had only good intentions for supporting the ICC.

After all, who could be possibly against the idea of having an international body dispenses justice the world over?

However, when experience and evidence incontrovertibly show that a thing is not what it says or claims to be, one should be able to discern the truth.

When the ICC discriminates in its investigations and indictments; when it turns a blind eye to the massive murderous marauding of the Western powers, which according to Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann is their way of “pick(ing) on the smaller ones,” shouldn’t we all learn, expose, and condemn such malicious deception?

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