Sudanese official booed by audience in Uganda on Bashir’s warrant
April 19, 2009 (KAMPALA) — The Sudanese presidential adviser Mustafa Ismail reportedly got booed by audience at a Ugandan university as he was making a speech on the arrest warrant against president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir.
The forum was organized by the Centre for Strategic and International Insight at hotel Africana.
The pro-government Sudanese Media Center (SMC) quoted Ismail as saying that his government wants the support of African countries “to drop the issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC) once and for all”.
The Sudanese official said that Darfur is simply a dispute over water, land and other resources but was inflated by Western media.
“The ICC’s decisions are influenced by propaganda and negative reactions. There has never been genocide in Darfur” Ismail said.
“It is not true that Arabs are trying to eliminate Africans,” he added, to which most Sudanese audience responded with jeers, New Vision website reported.
“The presidential adviser’s speech was full of concoction and distorted information. Bashir will face the mighty hand of justice” David Aleer, a Sudanese law student at Makerere University told the Ugandan newspaper.
Another law student at Kampala University by the name of Rick James said that the arrest of Bashir “is overdue”.
“The atrocities he has committed are crystal clear” he added.
On March 4th the ICC judges officially charged Bashir for seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Darfur making him the first sitting head of state to be indicted by The Hague based court.
The prosecutors at the ICC accused Bashir of masterminding a campaign to wipe out the three major African tribes in Darfur including Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.
The move drew strong criticisms from African governments who said it undermines peace efforts in Darfur while other politicians accused the court of being biased in its selection of cases.
But two Reuters video surveys conducted this year and last year showed that most Africans support bringing their leaders to trial by international courts.
Justice James Ogoola who is the Principal Judge at the High Court of Uganda remarked during the conference by saying that “any government not built on principles of democracy is like a house built on sand which collapses when a storm comes.”
But Abdu Katuntu, a Ugandan member of parliament, said that the ICC is unable to handle African issues and called for the establishment of local institutions to handle war crimes.
Uganda along with Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic referred crimes committed in their territory to the ICC for investigation.
A meeting of African ICC members is scheduled in June to discuss withdrawing from the court in response to ICC indictment of Bashir per request from Khartoum.
African states make the bulk of countries that ratified the Rome Statute which founding text of the ICC.
(ST)