ICC's independence questioned in President Bashir's indictment

By Venex Watebawa

A team of lawyers under an organisation Sudan International Defence Group are saying that the ICC indictment for President Bashiru is a colonial deal aimed at ending the current regime.

The lawyers also say that the victims of the Darfur region are selective and discriminative doubting the creditability of the investigating judge Moreno Ocampo whom they accuse of being a mouth piece of the sort.

As the ICC Rome statute review comes to conclusion at Munyonyo, the Sudanese community in the UK are saying that it’s selective of the war crimes occurring around the global adding that the ICC finds African developing countries as soft targets.

Addressing the press in Kampala, a researcher at the Sudan International Defence Group Stephen Morris said that the indictment of president Bashir is a game of regime change by developed countries.
They said that victims purported to testify at the ICC are currently living out of Sudan and some are not Sudanese nationals asserting that the investigation is discriminative and carefully calculative.

It was noted that the indictment of a seating president itself diver states the citizens and therefore aimed at humbling African president senior legal officer of the SIDG sir Geoffrey Nice said.

The ICC indictment is at the moment influencing the African Union to start isolating the Sudanese president from participating in activities that are aimed at solving African problems adding that its a new form of neo-colonialism.

See full statement;

Statement;
07th/June/10
African Solutions for Africa

A proposal by Sudan International Defence Group
(NGO)

During the RCSR conference SIDG has become aware of the increasing pressure by the ICC and its CICC supporters le and to influence the African Union (AU). The ICC is expecting great efforts to increase its control in Africa specifically in the matter of the President of Sudan, the elected Head of State of the largest African nations.

SIDG fully accepts despicable and grave crimes were committed by both sides of the Darfur conflict. There is however an overwhelming body of academic legal certainly that the crimes eventual description they were not genocide.

SIDG has openly been critical of the government of Sudan in not gathering and engaging with the investigation of these crimes to a standard acceptable to the United Nations. However it must be said, the ICC and especially the CICC’s own conduct has stigmatised the Sudanese people and soured the relationship between the Sudan government and the UN at precisely the moment years of goodwill should have counted. Therefore the Sudan has shut down its former good relations with UN bodies.

Regime Change

The outcome of the issuing of the arrest warrant at the insistence of the Prosecutor of the ICC has been to destabilise the developing democratic process and internal politics of the Sudan.
Sudan is not and does not wish to be a one party state. External N/ICC pressure may implode that political landscape with consequences for all its previously friendly neighbours.
Sudan is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. In twenty five years it has gone from acute shortages to being a major exporter of essential foods and materials. Future industrial development is being jeopardised by political sanctions and ill will from pressure outside of Africa.

Sudanese opposition parties have been seduced by the sympathy of the ICC and the coalition for the ICC (CICC) away from the hard work of electioneering and policy politics. The Sudan is attempting to aid the reconstruction of its opposition parties into modern policy driven advocates. Sudan’s politics has advanced to meet modern economic realities while maintaining its ancient religious and social customs. Sudan political thought has moved to the centre between the political extremes. ICC and CICC know nothing of this nor care to listen. Their evangelical legal theology is the Kampala conference entirely escapes them.
The ICC’s demand that African states take action against Sudan’s Head of State is an attempt at regime change by world federalists and sets African nation against African nation. This cannot be allowed as it would set a dangerous precedent for the future of Africa’s politically developing countries.

African Solutions

During the 20th century Africa was a bystander in a series of world wars between European, American and Asian nations that saw the slaughter of in excess of 50 million people. They now wish to impose their own solutions to those conflicts on a continent that has never sunk to such levels of barbarity. Africa can and must develop its own African solutions.

Modernisation of Africa

The need for modern technology to exploit African resources with overseas investors goes beyond mutual cooperation into intellectual legal intrusion. The ICC and its coalition in essence claims Africa is unable to take full responsibility and action for its own legal development and remedies. They have gone beyond the mandate of advising into demanding dangerous actions. This review conference is overwhelmed by lawyers deciding the legal outcomes for African nations regardless of the potential severe internecine repercussions to those nations.
Africa Unite

At this ICC review conference there is time for AU delegates to decide to unite to prevent disastrous consequences arising out of the ICC’s UN mandate in Africa’s affairs and cultural sensitivities. The role and status of AU must be strengthened in Africa to create its own policies for African solutions. Africa must assert its authority over its intellectual legal future and be prepared to work together in that cause. The upcoming AU Summit in Kampala, Uganda is the place to discuss this matter before an ICC/CICC inspired humanitarian disaster occurs;-
African Union well qualified requests to amend the Statute of Rome should be paramount, granted gracefully and respectfully supported by the UN security Council

African Control

The ICC has allowed its ever expanding staff, budget and Coalition ICC to carry the Statute of Rome into areas never envisioned by the United Nations Mandate. Statements by ICC’s campaigning prosecutor demanding increasing powers of prosecution over African elections, journalists and political party apparatus heralded by the CICC demonstrates its desire to remove political control from Africa to New York and the Hague’s global law offices. The ICC’s global networking unit, the grotesquely well funded CICC has ruthlessly exploited the media and its smaller dependent GOs to pejoratively describe Africa as a disjointed collection of failed states in need of legal resuscitation. The UN has inadvertently allowed the ICC to expand its mission and mandate without realising the CICC is colonising every NGO on the planet. The UN is rapidly losing command and control of its ICC creation. Africa must resist this denationalisation of its rights to self determination and self-image.

Asserting the right of African nations in an African legal framework to resolve its conflicts must be a priority for the AU. The AU must be allowed to freely create its own solutions. Free of threats and promises, free of time limits and conditions imposed regardless of the stage of political development of each AU nation. This is Africa’s greatest legal challenge. The one size fits all legal theology of the UN/ICC does not fit the complex and developing political structures of Africa.

African Solutions Africa Action

SIDG is aware that the AU has already considered and is discussing an amendment to statute of Rome that no sitting Head of State may be prosecuted by the ICC. There may well be unresolved legal precedents for this concept and they need to be explored.

SIDG considers this amendment to be a matter of urgent national security for the Sudan in the context of the ICC’s demand for AU nation’s aid to affect an arrest of its popular and democratically elected president. No African Nation should be put in the dangerous position of being held responsible for threatening the Head of a neighbour state. He cross boarder tribal allegiances would be ignited and exploited by sinister forces. The ICC’s worthy call for justice for victims that the SIDG supports would in this demand for removing the Sudan head of a state create a severe breakdown in civil order of unimaginable magnitude. The power vacuum caused by the forcible removal or death of any head of state has been the cause not the solution of civil war. The possibility of regime change by UN/ICC now completely engages the political considerations of many countries opposition groups.

The amendment is vitally important in the context of the Sudan, AU states and many other nations which are developing their own legal frameworks and political solutions to prevent conflicts. Rather than the AU nations being forced into conflict with each other by the ICC, the AU must unite to serve their peoples with governance that reflects their ancient legal cultures, developing political awareness, permanent legal frameworks, access to justice, and progress to ordered civil society without influence from the ICC or any global movement with secret political ambitions.

African Union Senate

SIDG unilaterally proposes that all African heads of state that wish to further serve Africa after their service to their own nation end be elevated into an African Senate of the AU.
These experienced elders should be afforded the role of African statesmen and given ambassadorial and advisory roles inside Africa to maintain their dignity and status in perpetuity for their years of dedication and service to the African continent. This is plainly and unambiguously an exist strategy for African heads of state. If there are legal even pragmatic strategies for doing this it may well solve a problem of elder leaders clinging too long to power.

African Decisions

SIDG has made these proposals in the expectation that the AU Summit in Kampala will be able to engage the UN in discussions that will avoid a tragedy