Timothy Garton Ash (The Guardian): Remember The Hague

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Guardian Unlimited (London)
Dated Thursday March 16

Every tyrant should hear Banquo's ghost hissing: 'Remember the Hague'
Milosevic's death must mark the end of bloody ethnic separation and the start of international accountability
By Timothy Garton Ash

The death of Slobodan Milosevic should mark an end and a beginning. The end of a long period in which a Europe of multi-ethnic empires has been bloodily transformed into a Europe of nation states, most with clear ethnic majorities. The beginning of a period when the sovereignty of such nation states is no longer absolute and rulers know that they will be called to account, before an impartial international court, for crimes they commit against their own people or against their neighbours . . . .

(I)t remains unsatisfactory that the Hague tribunal was established only after some of the worst atrocities in the former Yugoslavia had occurred and is concerned with just one (former) country. This gives credibility to those charges of "political justice" or "victors' justice" that always arise with trials of deposed political leaders, be they Nazi leaders arraigned at Nuremberg, Erich Honecker, Augusto Pinochet or, most recently, Saddam Hussein.

Still, it's a beginning. And we already have something better in place: the international criminal court (ICC), also in The Hague. It started work in 2002, and more than 100 states have ratified its statute, which covers genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. (The crime of international aggression is also supposed to be covered once it has been properly defined - a very tall order and something that has long eluded international lawyers.) The ICC has a Canadian president, Ghanaian and Bolivian vice-presidents, and an Argentinian chief prosecutor. It is pursuing cases in Uganda, Congo and Darfur, and has issued its first arrest warrants, for leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. In sum, this is a serious attempt to meet the accusations of double standards and retrospective, political justice by creating a transparent, impartial, genuinely international court, administering international law explicitly in force at the time the crimes are committed.

The ICC also has big problems. Its statute allows it to act only when states themselves are "unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution". As a result, gangster states such as Sudan can pretend they are willing and able to do so. Worse still, some of the world's largest and most powerful countries have not joined it, instead clinging to an older style of national sovereignty. The boycotters include Russia, China and the United States. The US has gone one step further in its opposition. It has pressured a number of ICC member states to sign bilateral exclusion agreements that protect US personnel from prosecution. This is a disgrace from the country that has helped more than any other to build the whole edifice of international law since 1945.

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