How has Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni moved from
being a top cheerleader of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to one
of its most virulent critics? Has he got legitimate concerns or is it a
question of self-serving fear and egoism?
Listen to Museveni addressing the UN General
Assembly in September. “...the ICC in a shallow, biased way has
continued to mishandle complex African issues. This is not acceptable.
The ICC should stop. Our advice to them is from very capable actors who
know what they are doing and saying. Kenya is recovering. Let her
recover. We know the origin of the past mistakes. The ICC way is not the
right one to handle those mistakes.”
All right thinking people should be dismayed by
the hypocrisy of the President on the ICC. In his speech at the UN, Mr
Museveni rubbished the ICC’s involvement in the post-election violence
cases in Kenya. Earlier, he had attended the AU summit and was one of
the key critics of the ICC, even threatening that AU members should
leave the ICC.
Yet it is Museveni who was a cheerleader of the
ICC from its inception. He became the first leader to refer a case to
the ICC when in 2004 he referred the case of the rebel Lord's Resistance
Army (LRA) to the ICC. In 2003, a year after the ICC became
operational, President Museveni appeared jointly with then ICC Chief
Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to announce that Uganda had decided to
refer the crimes committed by the LRA to the ICC.
The announcement made headlines globally. It was a
shot in the arm for the newly created court. Both Ocampo and his
‘complainant’ beamed for the cameras.
Fast forward to 2006 and the LRA continued to run
rings around the Ugandan army. Museveni kept pledging that by the end of
the dry season the LRA would be history. The suffering people of
northern Uganda wondered which dry season Museveni meant as he had been
making the same promise since 1996!
Meanwhile in 2005, the Sudan peace deal was
finally signed. Even though the death of John Garang brought some doubts
about the future, the new leader of South Sudan, Mr Salva Kiir, came to
Kampala to celebrate the 2006 NRM anniversary, carrying a video
recording of a meeting between his then Vice President Dr Riek Machar
and the LRA leader Joseph Kony. He told Museveni that his government
could broker peace between the LRA and the Uganda government.
To the annoyance of the ICC, Museveni announced
that his government would talk to the LRA. When asked about the fate of
the ICC indictments, Museveni said he would ‘talk to the ICC to withdraw
the indictments’.
Awkward situation
That year I sat in a meeting where international
law expert Barney Afako gave Museveni a crash course on the legal
terrain the Juba peace process was navigating. Museveni was told plainly
that only the UN Security Council could suspend the warrants of arrest
and allow for a domestic justice and accountability process, which must
pass the test of being enough to make the ICC process unnecessary.
During the Juba peace talks, Museveni paid lip
service to domestic processes but never made any move to have the
warrants of arrest against the LRA commanders withdrawn. The ICC on the
other hand kept making disruptive media statements to the effect that
the peace talks will not deter it from pursuing the LRA indictees.
The ICC’s shadow around the Juba process also made
us to re-examine our domestic system. In cases of mass murders of
citizens by dictators or rebels, Africa’s domestic systems are still
drastically wanting.
What has happened now that Museveni is rubbishing a
court he has previously championed? Why has he become a defender of
those wanted by the ICC?
The reasons are not difficult to find. Given the
determination of the ICC to go after sitting heads of state, Museveni
finds himself in an awkward situation. Heads of state like Sudan’s Omar
al-Bashir and Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta enjoy immunity under the
constitutions of their respective countries but the ICC Statutes can
override even presidential immunity.
Could it be that in mourning for Kenyatta,
Museveni is mourning for himself? If truth be told, Museveni’s tirade
against the ICC in New York is pure hypocrisy. Unless a country is
unable or unwilling to deal with particular cases, the ICC will not come
in.
In the case of Bashir, the Khartoum regime has
been adamant over war crimes in Darfur. In the Kenyatta case, it is the
Kenya parliament that voted to refer the cases to the ICC, arguing that
local courts were not likely to guarantee fair trials.
With due respect, this time Museveni is on the
wrong side of history. Only the ICC can stand as a reminder to all
perpetrators of impunity that there will be a day of reckoning. Museveni
dreads the day of reckoning. That is his real problem with the
International Criminal Court.
Mr Mao is the president of Uganda's Democratic Party and a lawyer. mpmao@yahoo.com
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
