Ayoon Wa Azan (I Will Stick to My Position )
Jihad el-Khazen Al-Hayat - 13/08/08//
Darfur is the scene of an atrocious crime not to be underestimated. Since 2003, this crime has claimed 200 thousand lives - if not more - and left 2.5 million people homeless. Our duty is to ask for the trial of all those responsible whoever they are. Hushing up such a horrible crime is tantamount to complicity.
As a matter of fact, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, accuses Al-Bashir in a list of ten specific charges of orchestrating genocide that has killed 35,000 people outright and at least another 100,000 through "slow death."
I see Moreno-Ocampo as a cockroach in the theater of the absurd performing a farce. I will stick to my stance until the international tribunal tries George Bush for committing war crimes in Iraq.
Both crimes in Darfur and Iraq can be traced back to 2003. But the international tribunal that has not indicted anyone yet, was requested by the Security Council in 2005 to investigate the Darfur massacres. The United States and other Western countries were behind the request. This came at a time when the intelligence - on the grounds of which the Bush administration justified the war on Iraq - was said to be falsified or overstated and while the terror mounted, not to say hosted, by the occupation claimed hundreds of innocent Iraqis on a daily basis.
The information on the crimes committed by the Bush administration is documented in official undeniable and inconclusive reports. As for the information on the role of Sudan's president in the Darfur crimes, it is not based on confiscated or leaked official Sudanese documents, but rather on analyses, estimates, speculations, and suspicions.
I hope the above words are taken at face value. I am not denying the Darfur crimes; I am rather denouncing them and asking for the trial of the criminals. I am neither acquitting Omar Al-Bashir nor convicting him. I am rather condemning the International Criminal Court for choosing - out of the two simultaneously committed crimes - to focus on the minor one. The tribunal has acted at the instigation of the country that committed the crime in Iraq along with its accomplice, Britain. It was the British Labor cabinet that provided the Bush administration with two lies: the first is that Saddam's Iraq can use chemical weapons in two days' time; the second is that the Iraqi regime was attempting to buy uranium from Niger. Colin Powell, the then Secretary of State, referred in his speech to this lie which later became known as the "16 Words." This is all documented in Tony Blair's overstated "intelligence records." As for the Bush administration, it is accused of concealing the intelligence that raised doubts about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities, weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al-Qaeda and the terrorist 9/11 attacks. I personally do not know if the tribunal for the Sudan has an intelligence file similar to the British one or intelligence reports such as the 2002 report summing up the information available to 16 American intelligence services.
Very clearly, my objective is not to say that the greater crime justifies the minor one. I mean to say that the International Criminal Court must issue two indictments against George Bush and Dick Cheney on the grounds of the available evidence. This will earn it the credibility it needs to accuse the Third World leaders it deems guilty.
Until then, I do not recognize the International Criminal Court as a legitimate body, the same way President Al-Bashir does not. Sudan is not signatory to the Rome Statute that set up the Court. For this reason, it prefers to deal with the International Court of Justice that is part of the United Nations of which Sudan is a member.
This is not merely Sudan's view or the view of a citizen like me. It is the view of China and Russia too. The Chinese Ambassador to the UN, Guangya Wang, told journalists that the suspension of the resolution by the Security Council is not sufficient. For him, the permanent member states should meet with the prosecutor and explain to him the negative repercussions on peace resulting from Omar Bashir's prosecution. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had earlier expressed an opinion similar to that of the Chinese ambassador. China's stance on Sudan was used against it on the eve of the Olympic Games.
President Al-Bashir showed wisdom when he abstained from escalation in reply to the indictment. He rather went to Al-Fasher and launched an initiative inviting the rebels in Darfur and all political parties to join the process. He called upon the countries of the region to support the new peace talks, pledged to pursue the implementation of the peace agreement between the North and the South, and signed a very important electoral law.
I wish President Al-Bashir had announced all these steps before the indictment. Had he done so, his position would have been much stronger today. To be continued with a discussion of China, Sudan, and Africa.
http://www.j-khazen.blogspot.com/
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