Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni wants Africa to quit the International Criminal Court over the way the court has handled Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta‘s case.
From The Saturday Monitor: Uganda has admitted rallying African countries to collectively withdraw from the International Criminal Court, citing the court’s “selective justice” administration and the West’s patronising attitude. According to state minister for International Affairs Okello-Oryem, the ICC failure to treat elected African leaders with respect became an “irritant”, engineering a “very strong momentum toward total withdrawal” from the international court.
“This is because of selective justice and arrogance of members of the court not to take into consideration matters of justice vis-à-vis the potential to cause chaos in a country [while dispensing cases],” he said on Thursday.
African Union chairperson, Ms Dlamini-Zuma, has separately written to the President of the UN Security Council, urging it to defer the trial of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto at the ICC in the wake of last month’s terrorist attack in Nairobi.
But Amnesty International condemned the diplomatic tinkering that could result in indicted African leaders getting off the hook : “A resolution calling on African states to withdraw en bloc from the Rome Statute would be reactionary in the extreme,” said Mr Tawanda Hondora, the organisation’s Deputy Director of Law and Policy. “Such a resolution would serve no purpose except to shield from justice, and to give succour to people suspected of committing some of the worst crimes known to humanity,” he reasoned.
The ICC issued five indictments for LRA commanders, and has been investigating war crimes committed in conflict between the LRA and the Uganda government. But Uganda wants to deal with rebels and their surrender, which could be complicated by the indictments, says Uganda officials.
