dinsdag 7 april 2009

Soedan 2

Ismael heeft een nieuwe reactie op uw bericht "Soedan " achtergelaten:

Ben je bekend met de context van deze aanklacht en de implicaties voor de regio, Stan?Er is veel misinformatie over Sudan de wereld in geholpen. Zo is de eerdere beslissing van de hoofdaanklager Campo om Bashir te vervolgen voor genocide ongegrond verklaard. Je moet je de vraag stellen wat het oplevert om El Bashir voor oorlogsmisdaden aan te klagen. En wat het betekent voor de Darfuri's zelf bijvoorbeeld. Iemand die er ontzettend veel van af weet is Alex de Waal, die er samen met Julie Flint een diepgravende analyse over geschreven heeft. Op zijn blog bericht hij dagelijks over ontwikkelingen in het gebied, met heel veel achtergrondinfo. Ik raad je eens aan om dat door te nemen. Over de aanklacht van het ICC schrijft hij als volgt:ON REACTIONS BY THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY: “There was a quite stunning naiveté at play here. With one breath [human rights groups] were saying [the Sudanese] government is responsible for some of the most heinous crimes on the book (which indeed is correct) and on the other they were saying, well, if they are given the right incentives and the right pressure, and they’re threatened with an arrest warrant, they’ll just come along tamely. The [Sudanese] government made it absolutely clear that it regarded the arrest warrant as an declaration of war, a game changer in which the existing arrangements whereby it allowed an operation that was feeding some three or four million people in Darfur with a great deal of independence and a huge amount of success, that the agreements under which this was allowed to continue, would be jeopardized. It said the UN presence would be jeopardized, the peacekeepers would be jeopardized, too, because it regarded this as a fight to the death, an attempt at regime change. And to be frank, that’s what it is. . . . It’s really regime change by judicial activism, and they’ve recognized it as that and of course they’re digging in. And they’ve called our bluff and I don’t see a way out of it.”ON DEPARTURE OF AID AND PEACEKEEPING GROUPS: “And how was it possible for the accumulated wisdom of the international community not to see the blindingly obvious fact that it was in the interests of three or so million victims of the atrocities of this war to be kept alive by a continuing aid operation which the government had clearly threatened to close down. And yet this issue was not even debated at the UN Security Council. It was brought up by the African Union, it was brought up by a number of people such as myself and completely ignored, and now we are facing that reality. . . . The [Sudanese] government has allowed peacekeepers in; it’s allowed an extraordinarily effective humanitarian operation to proceed. We’ve seen levels of violence reduced. More than 90 percent of those who were killed in Darfur were killed in 2003–2004. Yes, the comprehensive peace agreement between North and South has been imperfectly implemented, but the imperfect implementation has brought peace to 80 percent of Sudanese that they never knew in an entire generation. And we are putting all that on the line just for the symbolism of saying we want one man in the dock.”ON VICTIMS’ NEED FOR JUSTICE: “[I]t’s absolutely true that millions of Darfurian victims—I’ve spoken to many of them myself—demand justice. And when they talk about justice, they don’t just mean vetting Bashir in court. For them, that is an emotional satisfaction, and a right. They talk about restorative justice. They talk about returning to their homes. They talk about compensation. They talk about being able to resume the life they’ve lost. I do not see how what has happened over the last week has taken a single step forward in terms of all those other components of justice, as well as exposing them to the very grave danger of hunger, of disease, of further violence, of the fact that the thousands of international witnesses who were there in Darfur, whose very presence was so important in bringing down the level of violence—not of course to anything like zero, but very considerably down nonetheless—those people have gone.”ON THE POSSIBILITY OF WAR: Anybody who has any familiarity, who has lived in Sudan, knows that what you do is you negotiate, you give [Sudanese politicians] a soft landing, a place to land. And huge progress has been made in the last few years most notably in the north-south peace agreement, [and] in bringing down the levels of violence in Darfur by 90 percent by doing precisely that. If you put their backs against the wall as was done 15 years ago, when you isolate them internationally, turn them into pariahs, then they’re going to fight, and millions may die.”ON THE UPCOMING SUDANESE ELECTIONS: “[I]t’s absolutely correct that [the ICC is] on a collision course with the elections. The vision of the elections and the comprehensive peace agreement was that this was the opportunity, the first step in democratic transformation. No one had any illusions that this was going to be the be-all and end-all, these were not going to be like U.S. elections, but they were going to be a step in that direction. And President Bashir was even contemplating stepping down. . . . I can’t say for sure whether that was true or not but certainly now Bashir has absolutely no option but to fix that election so that he wins. . . . And the use of the elections as a cynical ploy for him to gain legitimacy and stay in power is such an insult to the vision of democratic transformation that was adopted not only by the former Southern rebels, the SPLM, but also by many in his own party.”
http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/2009/03/09/alex-on-the-kojo-nnamdi-show/'
Desondanks, Ismael, het schenden van internationaal recht dient bestraft te worden. Het recht is het enige dat de mens kan beschermen. Dat is mijn uitgangspunt.

2 opmerkingen:

Ismael zei

Wat is recht in deze context, Stan? Zal het vervolgen van Bashir de mensen in Sudan beschermen of juist aan meer gevaar blootstellen? Is een rechtstaat (waar het in Zuid-Sudan en Darfur aan ontbreekt) niet iets dat na een lang proces waar jaren overheen gaat ingesteld kan worden?

Is het rechtvaardig om El Bashir te vervolgen ten koste van andere mensenlevens omdat dit bepaalde belangen dient? Is het rechtvaardig om daarbij andere groepen in het gebied zoals JEM (door Franse geld en wapens gesteund) de vrije hand te geven in het uitvoeren van moordpartijen?

Het ICC heeft een grote uitloop van juristen in de staf van Ocampo gekend, het ICC dreigt door de Afrikaanse Unie geboycot te worden vanwege selectieve vervolging, het ICC krijgt klap na klap te verduren door deze beslissing die niet alleen fout getimed is, maar ook nog eens te eenzijdig geformuleerd is.

In de ideale omstandigheden had El Bashir zich ook voor mij voor het Strafhof moeten verantwoorden voor oorlogsmisdaden. Maar er is zo ontzettend veel kroms in deze aanklacht en de implicaties daarvan, dat niets doen beter is dan El Bashir vervolgen.

Anoniem zei

Wat moeilijk. Ik vind dat Ismael wel een punt heeft. Mensen hebben ook het recht om te leven. Als het theoretische recht prevaleert boven het "praktisch" vermoorden van mensen, dan maar niet. Ik denk dat je Bashir op een later tydstip altijd nog kunt vervolgen. Er zijn wel slechtere redenen te bedenken waarom je iemand (voorlopig) niet zou vervolgen, zoals we allemaal weten.

anzi


anzi

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...