21 - 27 February 2002
Issue No.574
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 February 2002 Issue No.574 |
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Can of worms
The Milosevic trial has unleashed a barrage of questions regarding the legitimacy and credibility of international tribunals, writes Negar Azimi
Jonathan Swift is said to have quipped that "laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but which let wasps and hornets break through." Last week's dramatic opening of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic has seemingly defied such a belief. For many people, the former Serb strongman's precarious situation is a stunning manifestation of the potential power international jurisprudence may wield. Doubtless, questions are raised as to the trial's significance within the context of the global battle for a so-called justice- without-borders, while countless are left wondering, who will be next?
In the pre-Milosevic era, international law pundits and human rights activists once resoundingly deemed former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's 1998 arrest in London a seminal moment in the materialisation of a brand of transnational justice -- justice that transcends borders, political fancy or domestic whim. Though a Chilean court ruled that the retired general was too ill to stand trial last July -- thereby rendering futile all attempts to prosecute him -- the three-year saga did not fail to leave a lasting impact; to many, it signalled the end of an era of an oft- selective impunity. Indeed, it seemed that nobody was above the law.
Nevertheless, as Pinochet's and Milosevic's names were splashed across newspapers in ubiquitous fashion, countless efforts to wage a battle against a culture of impunity were being registered in increasingly far-flung locales. Largely a result of Pinochet's arrest, for example, was the February 2000 arrest in Dakar of Chad's ex-dictator, Hissein Habré. According to a 1992 fact-finding commission report, Habré's regime had been responsible for 400,000 political murders and upwards of 200,000 counts of torture. His case is currently pending in a Brussels District Court, while reports from Belgium indicate that the case against him is beginning to yield evidence not only of massive overt and covert US and French support for Habré's regime, but also of close ties between the US and the former dictator's notorious political police.
At the base of Mount Kilimanjaro resides another experiment in transnational justice in the form of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. Much like the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), the ICTR has been subject to attack for moving painfully slow, only having tried about 10 cases since its inception in November 1994. Also like the ICTY, the ICTR has been deemed by many a pathetic attempt to compensate for the lack of action taken by the international community in addressing a genocide that left between 500,000 and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead -- a collective soothing of consciences, as it were. However, the ICTR is not without its victories: it has conducted the first international trial for genocide in history, and its conviction of Jean Kambanda, Rwanda's former prime minister, represents the first time an international tribunal has found a former head of government guilty of genocide or crimes against humanity.
Similar initiatives are taking form to address atrocities committed in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and East Timor. Meanwhile, obvious candidates for individual prosecution most often fall into one of two categories: first, those in exile, such as Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, Haiti's Jean- Claude Duvalier and Raoul Cedras, Ethiopia's Mengitsu Haile Mariam, Uganda's Idi Amin; and second, those still enjoying impunity at home, among them senior Khmer Rouge leaders, and Efrain Rios- Montt in Guatemala.
But despite such initiatives, prosecutions remain largely tied to the political will of big state actors. Some may wonder why it is only the dictators of client states who are brought to justice and not the political leaders of those countries who put them in power and sustained them while they committed their atrocities. Why is Pinochet brought to justice and not Henry Kissinger? Why Habré and not the American and French leaders who supported him throughout his rule?
Ali Abunimah, vice-president of the Arab-American Action Network, told Al- Ahram Weekly, "What we are witnessing is not true justice but selective justice. Milosevic is being put on trial because the Western powers want that, but would they ever allow a truly impartial investigation into NATO's actions in Kosovo?"
And what of the man the Village Voice had deemed "Manhattan's Milosevic?" Kissinger, a revered statesman and current star of the lecture circuit, is also the one- time US secretary of state who recently called for limits on "universal jurisdiction prosecutions" in the journal Foreign Affairs, warning against allowing "legal principles to be used as weapons to settle political scores." Kissinger has reason for concern. He has long been haunted by American involvement in Chile; a French judge recently called on him to testify in court on to such involvement during his tenure as Richard Nixon's national security adviser. He narrowly evaded the summons, but political activists continue to call for his indictment for his hand in Chilean affairs as well as a devastating policy toward Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Earlier this year, Christopher Hitchens's scathing book The Trial of Henry Kissinger made best-seller lists and managed to land on the front cover of the American magazine Harper's .
In the Middle East, it is Ariel Sharon who is enjoying immunity thanks to the neophyte doctrine of international justice. Efforts have been made to indict the Israeli prime minister for the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut -- for which a 1983 Israeli government inquiry determined that Sharon had been "indirectly responsible." For many, the case of Sharon reveals the contradictions in the application of the afore-mentioned doctrine. Abunimah of the Arab-American Action Network comments: "The United States, which strongly backs the trial of Milosevic, also opposes all efforts to convene the signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention to examine Israel's war crimes and violations in Palestine. Meanwhile, it welcomes Sharon in the White House like a hero."
Incidentally, the quest to indict Sharon and others was dealt a decisive blow last week at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In a decision that made few headlines, the body ruled that a Belgian arrest warrant for the acting foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo constituted a violation of international law. Human Rights Watch's Advocacy Director Reed Brody told Al-Ahram Weekly that the decision will prove deleterious: "The decision is nothing short of a setback for attempts to prosecute officials for war crimes. This ruling signals that officials will enjoy impunity for the time they are in office, which is against any trends toward international accountability."
Amidst such setbacks, the imminent birth of an International Criminal Court (ICC) bears a glimmer of hope for advocates of an international justice system. The drafting of the 1998 Rome Statute, laying the groundwork for the ICC under the auspices of the United Nations, exists as a landmark legal moment. The envisaged court is meant to address the most serious crimes via an international forum, namely, genocide, crimes of war and crimes against humanity. In the end, the ICC is meant to complement national legal structures, serving as a potential back- up when domestic systems are unwilling or genuinely unable to proceed.
Though many scoffed at the prospect of an international tribunal of this nature, the campaign to establish it has been quite successful; many estimate that the initiative will get its required 60th ratification by mid-2002. As it stands today, 52 countries have ratified the ICC Statute, with the US administration standing as perhaps the biggest objector to its mandate and mission. In a grand show of judicial chauvinism, America refuses to put itself under the writ of the international body. It seems that in the pursuit of what are often described as "special responsibilities" for international defence, the United States wants to maintain its leeway to commit what others may consider objectionable, or even worthy of the dreaded designation "war crimes."
In the end, we are left to see if the Milosevic trial will sound a warning against such categorical isolationism, and by extension, serve as notice that the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, however powerful, will henceforth have to answer to a new, improved brand of accountability. It is the era, after all, of a brave new judicial landscape, perhaps without precedent.
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