Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 20:35:59 +0200
Leadership, Genocide and War Crimes. An African Perspective
"Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court
of Justice and Human Rights."
By <http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/john-bart-gerald> John Bart Gerald
Global Research, July 15, 2014
africa
On June 30th the African Union summit meeting at Equatorial Guinea voted the
"Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court
of Justice and Human Rights." It maintains that while in power, African
leaders and "senior officials" are not subject to prosecution for genocide,
war crimes, or crimes against humanity. In principle the Protocol mirrors
the judicial realities of Canada and the U.S. which assure our heads of
state immunity, but less overtly.
Africans are creating an African Court as an alternative to NATO's
International Criminal Court which has chosen African leaders to call to
account. So to grant their heads of state immunity to charges of genocide is
a defensive measure objecting to a post-colonial assertion of European and
American controls. This Protocol is protested by International NGO's, and
strongly by Amnesty International which has since its inception in 1961
applied our moral precepts to countries which have rejected the empire's
direct colonial rule.
In Canada and the U.S. the leaders make themselves invulnerable to charges
of genocide, through manipulation of the legal system and perception
management of the public. U.S. Reservations at ratifying the Convention on
Genocide suggest the U.S. will decide whether charges of genocide can be
applied to the U.S.. Under Canadian law the Minister of Justice's approval
is required before the head of state (who appoints the Minister of Justice)
can be charged. In both countries, the political and judicial institutions
necessary to pursue charges of genocide against top officials are so deeply
part of a genocidal matrix no charges have successfully been laid through
the wars and destruction of the Republic of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, -
violating the Convention's prohibition against destruction of a national
group. In Canada policies furthering the destruction of aboriginal peoples
seem unstoppable by legal means. U.S. policies supporting the massacres of
indigenous people in Guatemala among other Central and South American
countries, and the support for Israel of both countries shows at least a
complicity in genocide.
Is it that African leaders are more honest than the political leaders of
Euro-American countries ? While not challenging the U.N. "Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," African countries are
attempting to protect the continuity of their own governance through a time
when powerful NATO countries have politicized the use of the Genocide
Convention beyond a primary concern for justice. Prosecutions by the
International Criminal Court too often assert punishment of African leaders
opposing Euro-American policies. Former Cote d'Ivoire President Laurent
Gbagbo was indicted while his replacement with IMF and Euro-American backing
harvested the results of all the crimes against humanity traced to both
sides of a conflict (instigated by the aggressor - the new president). The
ICC still has Bashir of Sudan under indictment, while the tragedies of
Sudan's population losses serve Western policies of resource accumulation.
Baldly, the founding of South Sudan created an African country with a
European name, and no need for autonomy other than its service to
international interests. In Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and
Central African Republic, issues of genocide rise directly from
destabilization by foreign interests seeking resources. These are not
African genocides, but Western genocides in blackface.
The legacy of European colonialism is the manipulation of African population
groups in countries formed not by native tribes, but a colonial division of
the spoils.
African leaders recognize the service to corporate Western interests of what
is currently NATO's International Criminal Court. Western NGO's and news
medias subscribe to a first world development program perfectly willing to
use genocide tactically, and as a propaganda tool for waging war.
The difficulty is also that the decision of the African leaders betrays the
Convention itself with a violation of its text and meaning. Article IV
states "Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in
Article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible
rulers, public officials or private individuals." While the UN Convention
might apply only to African countries participating in the Convention, the
Convention was intended to apply to leaders and government officials. While
African countries can make law it may not be adhered to by courts outside
Africa, which in a sense imprisons African leaders within the continent.
The well-respected Gerald Caplan's "Africa's Big Men betray it still," in
The Globe and Mail summarizes for Canadians colonialism's historical
arrogance toward all things African which are simply not European. This
maintains a notion that African leaders are somehow the intellectual
property of Westerners, good or bad through their service to Western values
and economic interests. After the African Independences, Caplan finds
African leaders betraying their people by brutalizing them. Hello ? At least
they were not "brutalized" as slaves. He traces all the catastrophe's and
wars of modern Africa to its leadership as well as the leaders'
mismanagement of buyouts by Western governments, corporate and military
interests.
To offer another perspective: the leaders of African independences were
brave, clever, and betrayed by their interface with world markets and
resource demands firmly in the pockets of Europe and the West. That their
countries now receive any portion at all of their resource revenue is a
tribute to each. In 'countries' where the European-made boundaries
contradict the reality of tribal areas, indigenous rule for thousands of
years was based on village and tribe, on families. African leaders differ
from deracinated rulers in North America for example, whose loyalties are
economically and politically based. When an African leader fails his entire
tribal and allied group become at risk. Where the political matrix is
tribal, political contention becomes tribal in a manner Westerners
understand as genocide.
Yet genocide is a European concept. Without Europe's example, both under the
Nazi's and in its dehumanization and massacres of colonized populations,
African bloodshed could be understood as tribal wars. Currently genocide
becomes a relevant issue in Africa as a result of Euro-American actions.
These consistently seek resource extraction, access, and control, through
destabilization. I would argue there are no instances of an African tribal
group acting purely in its own interests, attacking another African tribal
group. Even the Rwandan genocide(s) reflected massacres of groups which
historically intermarried and adapted to each other on African soil.
So it's for Africa to find its own way to interpret and judge our
Euro-American nightmare of "genocide."
It is almost impossible for a "white" Western press to put aside a sense of
racial and intellectual superiority to fault African leaders for the
simplest mechanisms of self defense against a misapplication of the Genocide
Convention to tribal politics. Again and again (Sudan, Rwanda, Cote
d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic) former
colonial and corporate interests manipulate African politics into
destabilization intended to result in tribal killings that Europeans and
Americans understand as genocide. Genocide has become a military tactic with
a goal of conquest. These conquests aren't of one African country by
another, but of the African countries by foreign interests. So to apply
charges of genocide to ruling Africans is a political mechanism, often the
result of an intentional program instigated by foreign interests and
destabilization. An African court would protect those in power and possibly
entire populations currently subjected to the military tactics of foreign
aggressors.
This doesn't mean that some African leaders aren't criminal, or that their
European and U.S. educations haven't empowered them to commit singularly
Western crimes. Their crimes pale when compared to those of the Western
leaders who initiated the destruction of the Democratic Republic of
Yugoslavia, the bombings and invasions of Iraq, Israel's manner of
subjugating the Palestinians, Canada's knowing destruction of its aboriginal
world. Each Western leader would be charged with genocide if our laws
allowed it and if the ICC were functioning as an organ of justice rather
than control. Because NATO country leaders are not charged, the rule of law
serves the guilty and the entire fabric of just societies is undermined.
As evident in the trials of Rwandans charged with genocide everyone is
responsible for his/her actions under the Convention on Genocide. The people
are held accountable for participation in programs of the powerful. The
lesson of this for North Americans should be that in both the U.S. and
Canada, application of the Convention on Genocide to our leaders and
government officials should not be decided by the government but by
plebiscite of the citizenry.
Notes
"Leaders at African summit vote to have immunity from war crimes and
genocide prosecution," Heather Saul, July 2, 2014, The Independent;
"Africa's Big Men betray it still," Gerald Caplan, July 11, 2014, The Globe
and Mail;
"Immunity for African Leaders?"John Campbell, July 9, 2014, Council on
Foreign Relations; "Immunity from Prosecution for Genocide,"
Bruce Clark, July 7, 2014, Dissident Voice;
<http://nightslantern.ca/essayjbg.htm> "North American game plans and the
Convention on Genocide," J.B. Gerald, May 23, 2013, nightslantern.ca.
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