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War Crimes Are Everywhere, UK Uses Karadzic
to Say, African Focus of Ocampo's ICC Defended
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
July 22 -- In Serbia Radovan
Karadzic was arrested, one week after International
Criminal Court
prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked for an arrest warrant against
Sudan's
president Omar Al Bashir. The UK's Ambassador to the UN John Sawers
emerged
from the Security Council on July 22 to tell the press that the case of
Karadzic
is "a reminder that war crimes take place everywhere... on every
continent."
Inner City Press asked if
he meant this in any way as a
response to the criticism
that all of prosecutions brought by Moreno-Ocampo's
ICC have been in Africa. "I'm not saying that at all," Sawers
responded. He noted that three African countries asked the ICC to be
engaged.
Video here,
from Minute 2:28.
But
on July 17 Moreno-Ocampo
admitted
that he on his own had selected Uganda and Congo as the most serious
situations in Africa, and then convinced the president of each country
to refer
the case to him. After this admission, to
argue that Moreno-Ocampo is only responding to requests is no longer
tenable. When Inner City Press asked him
about his Africa focus, some say fetish, Moreno-Ocampo said that he
will not
give in to the notion of "geographic balance." When
Inner City Press asked Sawers about this,
Sawers responded that he thinks it would be "a mistake for the work of
the
ICC to be distorted to achieve geographical balance, political
balance."
But
why then come
out to make a geographic argument, that Karadzic's arrest shows
fairness, that
war crimes take place all over, on all continents? Thou doth protest too much,
was the phrase that came to mind.
Amb. Sawers and Mia Farrow, Blackwater
and geographical balance not shown
The UN's
expert on children and armed conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy, when Inner
City
Press asked why child soldier recruitment hasn't been referred to the
ICC in
Myanmar, the world's number one child soldier recruit, said that's
because
Myanmar is not a party to the ICC's Rome Statute. Nor is Sri Lanka or
North
Korea. Inner City Press asked Sawers, in
light of his statement about African countries inviting the ICC in, why
he
thought that Asian countries have been less willing to join the ICC.
Sawers
answered that there are 106 members, but some countries - presumably he
meant
some in Asia -- have "stood back and allowed a pattern to build up of
performance." Video here,
from
Minute 4:32.
One
question is
whether Moreno-Ocampo's request for an arrest warrant against Sudan's
president
Omar Al Bashir makes non-members more or less likely to join the ICC. "We've entered new and uncharted
territory," Sawers acknowledged. Has this territory been entered with
the
right
person as the lead prosecutor at the ICC?
Watch this site. And
this --
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