This is a final insult and a great sacrilege to the memory of Me Valdiodio Ndiaye as we recall his speech in Dakar to French President Charles De Gaulle.
Let’s start by understanding how the ICC works in practice:
The Rome Statute is the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It came into force on July 1, 2002. The ICC is responsible according to four criteria.
Territorial Jurisdictions:`
The Court can only investigate within the Member States.
Personal skills:
The court judges not organizations or states, but adult natural persons
Temporal Skills:
The crimes in question are those committed after July 1, 2002, with the exception of crimes of aggression ratified since 2018.
Material knowledge:
This jurisdiction defines the types of offenses that the court can prosecute. There are now 4 crimes. Crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and, since July 17, 2018, crimes of aggression, which are crimes committed by persons or states preparing an armed conflict with the aim of destabilizing one or more sovereign states or have promoted.
It is important to emphasize that the ICC is a court of last resort and is complementary to national jurisdictions.
It should then be mentioned that the prosecution of the ICC is based on the principle of complementarity, which means that the Court intervenes when states are unable or unwilling to investigate and prosecute crimes within the framework of the ICC. Jurisdiction of the ICC.
In all cases, cooperation between ICC member states is essential to arrest and transfer suspects to the court.
“The court does not have its own police force. It must therefore count on the cooperation of States, which is essential in arresting and handing over suspects. Responsibility for enforcing arrest warrants rests with states. With the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the states have created a system based on two pillars: the Court represents the judicial pillar, while the operative pillar, also with regard to the execution of the decisions of the Court, remains with the states. »
Who can trigger the ICC?
The ICC can be seized because of a situation either:
– by a Member State.
– by the United Nations Security Council.
– by the prosecutor himself after denunciations by citizens.
When citizens go directly to the prosecutor with the help of a lawyer, as seems to be the case with Me Branco at the moment. The prosecutor must verify whether the national authorities have committed themselves to investigating or bringing to justice the people alleged to have committed these crimes. Finally, it must notify States Parties and other States that may have jurisdiction of its intention to initiate an investigation. He must also have the approval of the Investigative Chamber.
The decisions of the court and the prosecutor’s office are taken into account, taking them into account.
International Relations :
The actions of the ICC can have an impact on relations between states. Consequently, the Court can take into account the political and diplomatic implications of its decisions, particularly as regards relations with the States directly concerned by the investigation or prosecution. The ICC relies on the support and cooperation of member states in conducting its investigations and prosecutions. Political considerations can therefore also include the need to maintain positive relations with Member States and ensure their continued cooperation.
Resources and Priorities:
The ICC has limited resources and therefore has to prioritize investigations and prosecutions. This must take into account the scale and seriousness of the alleged crimes, as well as the feasibility and availability of the resources needed to complete the judicial process.
In the face of many more intense conflicts in the world, the situation in Senegal is of particular concern to us, because it is our country, and which will not be the court’s priority, given the communication of the Senegalese government, which undertakes its readiness to show that the situation will be clarified, even if we in the country are convinced that this communication will not lead to anything and will not advance the cases, but the ICC will not take this interpretation.
One of the court’s main problems is the selectivity of prosecution.
The Court has focused its attention on certain predominantly African actors, while ignoring other situations that may also merit investigation and prosecution.
The long processing time of the cases clearly shows the inefficiency of the court.
Since its inception, the court has handled 30 cases, ten cases of which have been started with nearly four acquittals.
Let’s take the case of some cases from elsewhere, all of African origin.
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): Several million dead.
Case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo:
The events happened between 2002 and 2003 and were heard ten years later, in 2012. The verdict for war crimes (recruitment and use of child soldiers) was announced.
Case of Germain Katanga:
The events happened in 2003. More than ten years later, in 2014, he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Case of Bosco Ntaganda:
found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity 16 years later in 2019.
Judgment announced in 2019. The events happened between 2002 and 2003.
Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui case: acquitted in 2012, 10 years later. The events took place in 2003.
Darfur (Sudan): Nearly 400,000 dead.
Case of Omar Al-Bashir:
Arrest warrants were issued in 2009 and 2010, but Omar Al-Bashir was not arrested. The events took place from 2003 onwards.
Central African Republic:
On December 21, 2004, the Central African government appealed to the court for crimes committed on its territory.
Case of Jean Pierre Bemba Gombo:
He is implicated in two counts of crimes against humanity (murder and rape) and three counts of war crimes (murder, rape and looting). Judgment from 2016 (conviction in first instance, acquittal on appeal in 2018).
Kenya:
The post-election crisis of 2007–2008 left nearly 1,500 dead and 30,000 displaced.
Cases of Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto and Joshua Arap Sang:
They were prosecuted. The proceedings were discontinued despite the seriousness of the facts.
Let’s end with the cases of Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, which show us that the ICC is not only inefficient, powerless and slow, but exists only to help the victors neutralize the vanquished.
Ivory Coast:
In January 2019, after nearly ten years of trial, the ICC Trial Chamber acquitted Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Blé Goudé of all charges against them, including crimes against humanity committed during the post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 – were committed in 2011. How can we take the ICC seriously when we know that according to the United Nations, around 3,000 people were killed in the violence following the 2010/2011 elections and other sources estimate that the death toll could be even higher and up to 3,500 could reach dead? .
This publication follows purely political negotiations between the two veterans of Ivorian politics, knowing full well that Allassane Ouattara and Guillaume Soro had militias who committed atrocities and that they were never prosecuted because they had the support of France and the United Nations.
Where is the justice in all this?
Libya:
The Libyan crisis of 2011 claimed between 10,000 and 30,000 lives. Instead of directly prosecuting the rebels who killed Gaddafi and placing France’s responsibility on Sarkozy, who had exceeded the UN mandate and caused a humanitarian crisis in which human dignity was violated by the resurgence of slavery, the ICC decided to Prosecute Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi. From then until now, they couldn’t do anything about him.
We don’t even talk about the events in Chad, where General Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, wanting to extend the transition by two years, caused more than 128 deaths under the guise of France, the massacres in Yemen, in Palestine… The… Has ICC brought solutions to these recurring dramas? Obviously not.
How can we know all this in order to remain silent and let the Senegalese people hope that the ICC will suddenly come to settle the Macky Sall regime’s frenzied missteps?
So, looking at the situation from that angle, we realize that all this fuss about the ICC is not the solution against Macky Sall. If, exceptionally, yes, I say well, if not by a miracle, the court decides to act, it will take almost ten years and will probably end in an acquittal, if in more serious cases than in Senegal there will be acquittals or a dismissal comes.
So what explains this buzz around the ICC, as if Macky would fall off his pedestal once Juan Branco finished his work?
I think this excitement stems from ignorance of how the ICC works.
Young would-be chancellor Ngagne Demba Touré, despite his courage through excessive zeal and complacency, showed his ignorance of the ICC, citing the United States and Joe Biden as an example by invoking the ICC while minimizing the number of deaths in Côte d’Ivoire and the speech of Charles Taylor, who was indicted before the Special Court for Sierra Leone as the alleged offenses dated between November 1996 and January 2002 and therefore fell outside the Court’s temporal jurisdiction. He must have been deceived by the court being moved from the capital Freetown to The Hague for security reasons. Reading and repeating texts on the Internet in this way is completely different from understanding the actual problems. Unfortunately, this is not the case like many others who are excited about this question.
I refuse to see people putting false hope in this counterproductive approach because it gets nowhere and, most importantly, causes us to lose a lot of lag in the battles we desperately need to fight. Our only goal must be for Macky to pass through the democratic ballot box process in 2024, then our justice system will have a free hand to solve and convict all of our dead.
Why is the ICC a bad solution for sovereignists, patriots and pan-Africanists?
The world consists of two camps.
The countries that insist on their total independence without ever negotiating it, and the countries that have surrendered or are negotiating their sovereignty.
There is the camp of Westerners with NATO under the supremacy of the United States, over all European countries, vassalized by the land of Uncle Sam, who in turn are trying to dominate African countries.
The United States, China and Russia are not negotiating their sovereignty. All countries in the world should have the same will as these three countries. The good news is that this is increasingly the case given the enthusiasm and the many requests to join the BRICS.
The Rome Statute has so far been ratified by 123 countries. 31 states have signed the statute without ratifying it, including the United States, Russia and Israel. In 2016, Russia withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute on grounds of protecting state interests. India and China never signed the treaty.
For these countries, sovereignty is their main concern. Some US officials have expressed concerns that the ICC could undermine US national sovereignty.
They argued that potential lawsuits against US citizens could affect the jurisdiction of US domestic courts.
The United States preferred prosecuting serious crimes through its domestic legal system rather than prosecuting them in an international court. They claimed that their national judicial system was well equipped to deal with such crimes and provided sufficient human rights and due process guarantees.
As a proven and hardened sovereignist, I have the same claim for my people as the US position on the ICC.
Americans want to respect their country’s sovereignty. I insist on absolute respect for the full sovereignty of Senegal.
The ICC is a wrong solution. An illusion that allows some to no longer see reality, no longer organize for the release of political prisoners and no longer have strategies to achieve the five points listed above.
It might be a lot easier to sit down and hope a white magician has the solution rather than waking up to the power of the people and then coming up with appropriate Senegalese solutions to our problem, because on the other side of Macky’s side, he’s joking not and does not organize with him clan to stay in power forever.
Those who like having leaders who follow the opinion of the masses can look elsewhere. Here I will always stand up for the steps that I believe are the best for our country and, above all, I appeal to those who share the same vision as I do on these points to come ipso facto so that we organize ourselves better, to achieve this wage a useful struggle for the country.
Rather than fight and focus on the resources people have to solve our problem the Senegalese way, some choose to put our hope in a foreigner who hopes to carve his name as the savior of the Senegalese people to enter into history. This happened, incidentally, as did Victor Schœlcher in 1848, who stole paternity for the abolition of slavery, while thousands of blacks, led by Toussaint Louverture, fought to the death for their liberation with the founding of the Republic of Haiti in 1804 . But there are those who like to remind the black man that he cannot achieve anything without the help of the white man.
How can you be so naive?
I’m amazed at how easily some people pin their hopes on the newcomer without knowing exactly what results they will get.
The struggle for our country’s full sovereignty has a bright future ahead and we will fight it without compromise. This is the meaning of our life. That is the ultimate goal of our party.
* Ameth DIALLO
National Coordinator of Gox Yu Bees – ANTA (National Alliance for Transparency and Abundance).