Sudan: Go to The Hague
Editorial, by the St Louis Post Dispatch
Feb 3, 2005 — Now that the United States has affirmed its view that the bloodshed in the Darfur region of Sudan is genocide, it needs to show even more moral courage by insisting that the International Criminal Court in The Hague be allowed to investigate the gross and systematic human rights violations occurring in that region of Africa.
A new U.N. report has confirmed that atrocities – including the destruction of villages, mass killings of civilians and rapes – are being carried out against rebels by Sudanese government soldiers and their Janjaweed militia allies. Some 70,000 people reportedly have died of violence, hunger and disease since 2003. Though a new report by a special U.N. commission stopped short of referring to the incident as genocide, it did recommend that cases growing out of the killings be handled by the ICC.
The Bush administration objects to that recommendation due to its ideological opposition to the ICC, saying the tribunal might be used for politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. diplomats and soldiers around the world. This nation has played a major role since World War II in holding people accountable for crimes against humanity. The ICC represents a high standard of legal authority on this issue, one the Bush administration should welcome.
Instead, the administration has proposed that a United Nations and African Union tribunal set up after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda be allowed to try suspects in the Darfur conflict. The special U.N. commission shunned that approach as too costly and time-consuming compared to the relatively quick alternative of the ICC, which was set up to handle such cases. If the ICC is capable of conducting investigations and trials more rapidly than the tribunal in Tanzania, it could prevent many deaths and rein in the violence.
Sudan has blasted the U.N. report as biased and unbalanced, and there is no guarantee that China, a key importer of oil from Sudan, won’t thwart any Security Council move to give the ICC authority over the cases from Darfur. In addition, many African nations tend to close ranks, refusing to criticize other governments on the continent, however repressive.
These are additional reasons why the United States should add a moral dimension to the debate. It should urge the international community to treat Darfur like the emergency that it is and concede that swift prosecutions through the ICC offer the best hope for stopping the bloodshed.