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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Books Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Africa's new constitution
By Gamal Nkrumah
How must African dictators pine for the days when they could literally get away with murder! And how times have changed! Cambodia's Pol Pot escaped justice, and Chile's Gen. Augusto Pinochet also seems about to get away with mass murder. Today, it is Africa which is leading the way in meting out justice and retribution to the ogres of our age.
Ex-Chadian ruler Hissein Habre Habre's indictment in Senegal last week on torture charges sets a new legal precedent for the continent. Habre has lived in exile in Senegal since he was deposed in December 1990 by the current President of Chad Idriss Deby. At the time of his coup, Deby was chief-of-staff in Habre's army. The investigation now underway will prepare the ground for Habre to stand trial, possibly later this year.
"African countries have signed and ratified many international treaties," Ibrahim Kane, Africa desk officer at the London-based Interights organisation, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "In the past, however, their judiciaries either ignored the law or didn't enforce it. Judges never took the initiative. Now, with Habre's indictment, judges all over Africa will be using the law against violators of human rights. Ordinary people will have more trust in, and respect for, the law. It's one step forward."
Politically, the indictment of "the African Pinochet" has opened up a can of worms that has deeply disturbed the continent's political establishment. Former dictators and human rights violators must be trembling in their beds from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope.
But Habre's indictment has also strained relations between the two Sahelian states of Chad and Senegal, as the latter clearly hopes to make political capital out of indicting the fugitive it had harboured so long. Senegal has traditionally boasted one of Africa's most stable democracies and one of its most independent judiciaries. The next presidential elections are scheduled for 27 February. Incumbent President Abdou Diouf hopes to be returned to power on the wave of good publicity that has surrounded Habre's indictment. Diouf, of course, cannot claim direct responsibility for what is, after all, a judicial process, but his chances of a third term in office have been greatly bolstered. This is the first time that a former African head of state has been indicted for atrocities by the courts of another African country, and the indictment is as popular in Senegal as it is in Chad itself.
"Senegal can hold its head up high today," said Tine of the Dakar-based African Assembly for the Defence of Human Rights (RADDHO) told the Weekly. "My country is setting an example for Africa by showing that Africans can take care of their own problems. The time when brutal despots could just take their bank accounts and move next door is coming to an end."
Habre's dreaded Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS) claimed many victims during its reign of terror. The DDS was under the president's direct supervision and was staffed by his relatives and close associates. A former warlord who curried favour with the United States and France by posing as an anti-Libyan crusader, Habre usurped power in Chad in 1982 when he overthrew the government of Goukouni Wedeye. It is true that Wedeye had been a friend of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddhafi. But the weapons Habre received from the US and France were not simply used to rout the Libyans in northern Chad and dislodge them from the disputed Aouzou Strip that separated the two countries. Before long, the new ruler had turned the Western-supplied arms on his own people, in particular a number of rival ethnic groups who were proving restive. Armed to the teeth and supported politically by Washington and Paris, his regime was marked by systematic and institutionalised human rights violations, as well as openly genocidal campaigns against peoples who were deemed "disloyal" to the country's single party, such as the Hadjerai in 1987, and the Zaghawa in 1989.
A 1992 truth commission accused Habre's regime of 40,000 political murders, 736,000 cases of arbitrary arrest and 200,000 cases of torture, and of stealing $11.6 million from the Chadian treasury. Many high-ranking officials in Deby's government were implicated, including Deby himself. Their hands were clearly stained with blood. Not surprisingly, then, the administration has always shied away from pursuing Habre's extradition. Today, human rights groups again warn that the powers-that-be in Ndjamena are desperately trying to distance themselves from Habre, while continuing to pay lip service to democracy and justice.
Activists also accuse the Chadian government of deliberately withholding information. They believe that Habre's accomplices, many of whom still hold political office in Chad, will try to contain the situation and play down any ramifications which might threaten to lead too close to home.
Meanwhile in Senegal, Judge Demba Kandji of the Dakar Regional Court promptly placed Habre under house arrest this week after hearing testimony from six of his victims and receiving evidence concerning hundreds more who suffered along with them. In papers presented to Judge Kandji, Human Rights Watch provided details of 97 political killings, 142 cases of torture, 100 "disappearances" and 736 arbitrary arrests.
Nor is the roll call over. "With the publicity surrounding the case, more of Habre's victims will be encouraged to testify against their tormentors," Kane told the Weekly. Other African and international groups are working closely with Human Rights Watch and RADDHO on this case, among them the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (ATPDH), the Chadian League for Human Rights (LTDH), the National Organisation for Human Rights (Senegal), the London-based Interights, and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH). Seven individual Chadians and one Frenchwoman, whose Chadian husband was killed by Habre's regime, are acting as private plaintiffs, as is the Chadian Association of Victims of Political Repression and Crime (AVCRP), which represents 792 victims of the DDS.
Younous Mahadjir, vice-president of the Chadian Labour Confederation, was one of those who survived. While in jail under Habre, he was repeatedly subjected to the excruciatingly painful arbatachar torture, in which victims were battered while their hands and feet were tightly bound together behind their backs with raw-hide thongs. Mahadjir told reporters in the Chadian capital Ndjamena that Judge Kandji's ruling was "a triumph for those who are no longer with us -- my friends who were tortured, the people I saw die in jail".
International human rights activists agree. "This is a stunning victory for the Chadian people and for torture victims all over the world," said Reed Brody, Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch. "Today's indictment is a wake-up call to dictators in Africa and elsewhere, that if they commit similar atrocities they could also be brought to justice one day."
Habre's indictment was inspired by the case against Pinochet, but most observers believe that the former president of Chad will be less lucky than his Chilean counterpart, and will eventually stand trial. "The Pinochet case reaffirmed the principles of international law, that a country can judge the crime of torture no matter where the acts were committed, and that not even a former head of state has immunity from prosecution," Brody explained. "But it also showed us that there are countries where these lofty principles can actually be applied in practice. Senegal can now be counted among those countries. In Britain, political intervention led to Pinochet's return to Chile. The Senegalese authorities have so far refused to interfere in Habre's case."
The defining political moment of Africa 2000 came last week, as Habre's indictment was closely followed by the passing in South Africa's parliament of new legislation that outlaws numerous forms of racial and sexual discrimination. With the setting up of special "equality courts" to counter discrimination on grounds of race, gender, age, sexual orientation and physical disability, post-apartheid South Africa can now boast the most progressive legal system in the entire world.
Kane of Interights applauds these two landmark decisions. "Many people, especially in the West, cite the radical new changes in post-apartheid South Africa's legal system," he told the Weekly. "These new laws bring the system into line with the people's aspirations. They are also about who should be held accountable to whom." But Kane believes these two cases are only the tip of a much larger iceberg. "All over the continent, laws are changing for the better. Less publicised cases can be found in [the small West African country of] Benin, for example, where constitutional courts can now hear accusations of human rights violations and are empowered to compensate victims and punish violators. As enshrined in article 121 of Benin's Constitution, this is the first time we have such a provision in an African Constitution."
