ICC Second Arrest Warrant for Genocide against Sudanese President Al Bashir

Note from Theary Seng: The permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction over Cambodia as we have ratified the Rome Statute establishing this ICC and Cambodia is an ICC Member State. After the genocidal spree and mayhem ended, some of the Rwandan genocidiares were surprised that international law could pierced their nation's sovereignty and held them accountable before their own people and the international community. I believe that perpetrators of massive human rights abuse (here in Cambodia and elsewhere) -- many thinking themselves "good people" -- are so lost in their immediate frenzy to fully grasp the long piercing reach of international law. The ICC and other international legal instruments should make these abusers think twice... especially as certain international crimes do not have statute of limitations... hence, even 40 years from now, international law can still hunt them down. ABOVE NATIONS, HUMANITY is an excerpt from my law paper in advocating for this ICC. - www.thearyseng.com

http://www.thearyseng.com/images/VoiceOfJustice/vojabovenationshumanityoct07.jpg
http://ki-media.blogspot.com/2010/01/above-nations-humanity-universal.html

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Excerpt from the Coalition for ICC Press Release

Press Release: 12.07.2010

Pre-Trial Chamber I issues a second warrant of arrest against Omar Al Bashir for counts of genocide

ICC-CPI-20100712-PR557

Case: The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir
Situation: Darfur, Sudan

Today the ICC announced that ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I issued a second arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir for three counts of genocide committed against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. It is the first arrest warrant issued by the ICC for counts of genocide. This second arrest warrant is added to the previous one issued in March 2009 against Al Bashir for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Since the issuance of the arrest warrant, the Sudanese government has openly and consistently refused to cooperate with the Court.

Click the following link for the entire press release issued by the ICC:
http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/exeres/E9BD8B9F-4076-4F7C-9CAC-E489F1C127D9.htm

Hun Xen opposes ICC’s Bashir indictment

Omar al-Bashir (L) and Hun Xen (R)

PM opposes ICC’s Bashir indictment

Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Sebastian Strangio
The Phnom Penh Post

PRIME Minister Hun Sen has condemned the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, telling a Sudanese official the indictment could “adversely affect” peace negotiations in the war-torn African nation.

Koy Kuong, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that during a meeting last week, Hun Sen told Sudanese Special Envoy and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Ahmet Karti Mohamed that he shared Khartoum’s opposition to the indictment of its head of state.

“During the meeting, Samdech Hun Sen said that the warrant issued by the ICC for the purpose of arresting Omar al-Bashir, an incumbent president, undermines the peace negotiation process,” Koy Kuong said Tuesday.

In March 2009, the ICC, which sits in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant for Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities allegedly committed in the Darfur region. He is the first sitting head of state ever to be indicted by the ICC.

Hun Sen’s comments, which were reported Tuesday by the Non-Aligned Movement News Network, are similar to his earlier criticisms of internationally-backed legal proceedings underway in Cambodia – in particular, the proposed increase in the number of former Khmer Rouge figures who could be tried by the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Last September, the premier warned that pursuing further indictments risked sparking civil unrest.

Anne Heindel, a legal adviser for the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, described Hun Sen’s comments on the ICC as “notable”, but said they gave no clear indication of his views on the Khmer Rouge tribunal given the many differences between the two institutions.

As a signatory of the Rome Statute of the ICC, she said, Cambodia should support its work, but she added that the efficacy of the Bashir indictment – and indictments of sitting heads of state more generally – was a subject of hot debate.

“The jury’s out on whether [such indictments] contribute to peace or whether they hinder peace,” she said.

When justice is delayed

Friday, March 13, 2009
By Elizabeth Becker
The Phnom Penh Post

KI-Media question: If "Pol Pot and his comrades were among the worst monsters of the 20th century" and Hun Sen/Chea Sim/Heng Samrin, the former Khmer Rouge, were Pol Pot comrades, would this makes the latter trio the worst monsters of the 20th century (and into the 21st century) as well?

The United Nations seems paralyzed over what to do about the indictment of Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. There are warnings of humanitarian crises and dire consequences for Darfur. History suggests, however, that postponing justice could be even worse.

A case in point is Cambodia, where Khmer Rouge leaders are finally being tried 30 years after they were overthrown. (That is the equivalent of waiting until 1975 to try the Nazis.) Cambodia is the classic example of what happens when the international community puts off the hard work of justice in the name of realpolitik.

Trials for Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders were delayed for all the reasons that are being used today for Sudan. A trial would be impractical while war was still raging; a trial would disrupt the peace process; a trial would upset a hard-won equilibrium and reopen old wounds.

Pol Pot and his comrades were among the worst monsters of the 20th century. But they knew how to work the system, especially in defeat.

First, there was no trial in 1979 because a Soviet ally, Vietnam, overthrew the Khmer Rouge. So instead of imprisoning Pol Pot, the United States, China, Western Europe and Southeast Asia got together and underwrote a guerilla coalition, including the Khmer Rouge, to fight Vietnam. That allowed the Khmer Rouge even to retain Cambodia’s seat at United Nations.

In 1992, a UN peacekeeping operation, UNTAC, arrived to separate the warring parties and hold elections.

The UN also decided that a trial would hinder the establishment of peace. The elections were free and fair. Cambodians voted despite threats from the Khmer Rouge an they voted solidly against keeping Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who had become Cambodia’s prime minister under the Vietnamese.

But Hun Sen refused to give up power. Understanding the UN’s preoccupation with stability, his allies threatened a coup and a war against UNTAC. So UN officials allowed Hun Sen to become co-prime minister, a position he made up for himself.

Hun Sen made good on his coup threat anyway and pushed out Prince Norodom Rannaridh, the man who had actually won the election. Hun Sen has been the leader ever since, overseeing a corrupt government with little respect for human rights or the rule of law. And he has had no interest in a serious trial of the Khmer Rouge.

The UN negotiated for nearly 10 frustrating years to arrive at the hybrid tribunal for crimes against humanity — The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodian — slowly getting underway in Cambodia. In the meantime, Pol Pot and some of the seniormost leaders of the Khmer Rouge have died, some murdered.

A new generation of Cambodians has grown up largely ignorant of their country’s history, which is concealed under official propaganda. Many younger Cambodians believe that the Vietnamese or the Chinese are to blame for the killings. They can not imagine Cambodians willfully killing off nearly one-fourth of the population, undermining their country’s society, culture and future in the name of a radical revolution.

The trial was supposed to help remedy that national ignorance. But the UN has had to make critical compromises just to get the Hun Sen government to agree to a tribunal in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capitol, with a mixed set of Cambodian and international jurists, prosecutors and lawyers and staff.

Questions of corruption have already slowed the proceedings, as have restrictions on investigations and procedures that other courts would have never accepted. It is dubious that the tribunal can really set the historical record straight.

Only one conviction is certain. The first defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, known by his alias as Duch, was the junior official who ran the regime’s central torture chamber. He admitted guilt years ago after converting to Christianity.

The next proceeding is supposed to cover four of the most senior living Khmer Rouge officials. They deny their guilt, and their crimes may never be fully investigated.

I have interviewed all the men who led Cambodia through its catastrophic modern history — King Norodom Sihanouk, Lon Nol, Pol Pot and Hun Sen — as well as several senior Khmer Rouge officials. They played different roles at different times with different allies. Not one of them admitted any responsibility for the terrible suffering inflicted on their people.

At the rate things are going, the few Khmer Rouges leaders facing trial, aged and in declining health, will die protesting their innocence. There will be no apology or restitution to Cambodians, today among the poorest and most poorly treated people in the world.

This is what awaits Sudan if charges against President Bashir do not go forward and trials against him and others are postponed.

Elizabeth Becker, a former correspondent for the Washington Post, National Public Radio and The New York Times, is the author of "When the war was over, a history of the Khmer Rouge and Modern Cambodia."