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VerbalSmaeel
08-03-09, 13:30
To put justice before peace spells disaster for Sudan


The overzealous pursuit of Omar al-Bashir could ruin years of diplomatic progress. The human cost will be massive


Julie Flint and Alex de Waal
The Guardian, Friday 6 March 2009

After seven months' deliberation, the judges of the international criminal court finally issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, this week. Their appeal for retributive justice, in the form of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, was solemnly echoed in European and US capitals, and universally by rights organisations and activist groups. Within hours, however, the Sudan government showed that the court and its backers were powerless to defend or feed the millions of Darfurians in whose name justice is being sought. It summarily expelled the biggest international aid agencies, seized their assets, and closed down Sudanese human rights organisations at gunpoint.

As fuel to run the water pumps in Darfur's massive displaced camps runs low and the worst meningitis epidemic in a decade spreads with lethal speed, the Sudan government will be responsible for the deaths and suffering that will result - not only in Darfur, but in other parts of Sudan where relief work is now curtailed, including the drought-stricken eastern region.

But it was the ICC prosecutor who set the match to the dry tinder that is Sudan. It is quite extraordinary that Luis Moreno-Ocampo and a host of diplomats and activists were capable of condemning the government for the most hideous crimes with one breath and asserting with the next that it would tamely change its spots when threatened with standing trial in The Hague.

In truth, no one knew what the arrest warrant would mean. Rights groups who had supported an independent, permanent court kept their concerns private. Activist commentators and lawyers, often with little knowledge of Sudan, cleaved to the mantra that there is no peace without justice. Warrants against Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor (the former presidents of Yugoslavia and Liberia) had contributed to their speedy overthrow, Geoffrey Robertson argued, and would do the same to Bashir. But Milosevic and Taylor were weak, and the west wanted them gone. Bashir has fought off all challenges for 20 years, and the west has been supporting a fragile and hard-fought peace agreement that kept him in power as the quid pro quo of a transition to democracy.

All this now hangs by a thread. The risks were real, and they were inflated by the way in which Moreno-Ocampo insisted on pursuing Bashir for "ongoing genocide" with, he claimed fantastically, 5,000 people dying a month.

One of our reasons for opposing an arrest warrant when the application was made last year was that the case for genocide was based on flimsy evidence and weak argument. He repeatedly said, with no evidence whatsoever, that the government was orchestrating "systematic" attacks on the camps to "eliminate African tribes" there. In an encouraging indication that the ICC judges took their job seriously, and had a better command of the facts, they rejected his three charges of genocide, finding that he had failed to demonstrate that Bashir had a case to answer there. This was a stunning rebuff to Moreno-Ocampo, who has insisted in public more than once that Bashir is guilty of genocide and must be removed from office.

Worse, the prosecutor hinted - again repeatedly - that he got his information from humanitarian agencies. The damage done by this is incalculable. Sudanese security believes international agencies have been passing information to the ICC. So far, 11 agencies have been ordered out. Their humanitarian infrastructure has been dismantled and their assets seized. The UN agencies are still there. For the moment. But the World Food Programme relies on two now absent NGOs - Care and Save the Children - to distribute 80% of its rations. Will Khartoum allow the WFP to build a new food distribution infrastructure - a task of many months? Or will it simply insist on doing the job itself? Most likely the latter. Meanwhile, in addition to epidemics and a hunger season, Darfur faces the likelihood of violence as rebels and government militias respond to the new uncertainties by tearing up the local peace agreements that have kept much of Darfur stable for three years.

Last year, according to UN figures, about 150 Darfurians died every month in violence. Fewer than half were civilians; the others were soldiers, militiamen, bandits and rebels. Things could get worse, much worse. There is good reason to believe the aid agency expulsions are only the beginning. Those who have argued that the Sudan government responds to pressure make a critical mistake. Pressure works if the party under pressure can agree with the end point. If that is life imprisonment, pressure only generates counter-pressure. For Khartoum, Moreno-Ocampo's ultimatum is not negotiable. It is a fight to the death.

International justice is a virtuous enterprise, but not risk-free. Sudanese people are already paying a high price for the abandonment of the diplomatic approach that has yielded such benefits over the last four years. We fear there is more to come: NGO expulsions, actions against UN staff members and, worst of all, a go-slow or reversal of commitment to elections and self-determination for Southern Sudan. There will be no justice in Sudan without peace. When peace and justice clash, as they do in Sudan today, peace must prevail.

• Julie Flint and Alex de Waal are the co-authors of Darfur: A New History of a Long War

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/06/sudan-war-crimes

Olive Yao
08-03-09, 14:23
Bashir's prosecution will not ruin the chances for peace in Darfur

Ariela Blätter, july 31 2008 (http://www.atlantic-community.org/index/Open_Think_Tank_Article/Bashir's_Prosecution_Will_Not_Ruin_the_Chances_for _Peace_in_Darfur)


Many fear that the International Criminal Court’s charges against the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir will have “disastrous consequences” for the peace process in Darfur. This, however, could only be true if there was evidence of a real and substantive peace process in the first place.

If you listen to all the hype since the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor called for charges against Sudan's President al-Bashir, then you might believe that any real chance of stability in the war-torn region of Darfur is now lost forever. Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo's recent dramatic announcement that he is seeking an arrest warrant for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for Bashir, the sitting head of state, has become a lightning rod for Court-bashing and panic-mongering that such justice would be at the expense of peace in Darfur.

Has the prosecutor, as many have argued, made a misstep, acted beyond his competences, misjudged the situation and destroyed the chances for peace? Hardly. In this case, the prosecutor's authority to act was bestowed upon his office by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) who by resolution 1593 enabled his office to investigate past and present crimes and bring about an end to impunity in Darfur, while demanding full compliance by the Government of Sudan (GOS). The Council's action came after a 2005 Commission of Inquiry found widespread and systematic crimes and urged the Council to refer the Darfur case to the Court, because it would be "conducive, or contribute to, peace and stability in Darfur by removing serious obstacles to national reconciliation and the restoration of peaceful relations." The prosecutor's decision to move to the top of the food chain with his indictment of Bashir was taken only after his first set of indictments of two ‘middle men': Ali Kushaby, a Janjawid colonel, who was accused of leading the attacks against four villages, but was subsequently released by GOS for ‘lack of evidence;' and Ahmad Harun, former Minister of the State for the Interior, later promoted to Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs - a position meant to provide assistance to the Darfuri people - who was indicted for rape, torture and murder.

In seeking Bashir's arrest, the prosecutor addressed the mass of evidence that he and his team had gained from a variety of sources since 2003, which document atrocities that Bashir allegedly committed when he was the commander of the Sudan's civil and military apparatus. Specifically, they point to his role in masterminding a plan to eradicate Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups. Acting on the pretext of counterinsurgency, Bashir caused millions of civilians to be uprooted from their lands, destroyed their means of survival and condemned them to certain death in the desert or in the overcrowded camps. As if this wasn't enough, Bashir employed what Ocampo asserts was control of the state apparatus in order to subject the survivors living in displacement camps to rape, hunger and even more attacks - and therefore eventually bring about their physical destruction.

Some have argued that the prosecutor has misjudged the situation, which arguably now looks very different from the way it did between 2003 and 2005, when a scorched earth policy, intended to eradicate these ethnic groups, resulted in massive numbers of deaths. The linchpin of these arguments is that a post-2005 Darfur cannot be described as experiencing genocide but instead resembles a messier complex emergency. Even if this is true, the fact that genocidal acts may have been commissioned by the head of state at any time between 2003 and 2008 - the dates covered by the indictment - justifies Ocampo in making his case to the three judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber which will validate the charges.

In the delicate matter of managing peace and security, timing is an important factor. This prompts the simple question of whether this really is the right time to go after Bashir. Ocampo's view is that as the prosecutor, with such evidence in his hand, he has a duty to act and he does not have "the luxury to look away." Not to mention that the longer you wait to prosecute, the harder it is to prove your case - witnesses move away, survivors die and evidence dries up. Ocampo, who also believes that he has a duty to contribute to the prevention of crime, has pointed out that every day when Bashir remains free enables him to engage in the further commission of hostilities and abuses.

The flip side of this equation is that seeking such a prosecution now, while Bashir remains at the helm of the Sudanese state, will put the people of Darfur at further risk and will inspire retaliation. While it is true that one senior Sudanese official has issued a thinly veiled threat to the AU-UN peacekeepers operating in the country, this threat has not been carried out. Nor were the peacekeepers safe before the Prosecutor's indictment. On July 8th, for example, seven African peacekeepers were killed and others critically wounded, while another was shot dead a few days later. These events were extremely unfortunate, but threats to peacekeepers are neither new nor solely caused by the threat of ICC prosecution. Many fear that indictment would limit the possibility of humanitarian assistance , however, this is something Bashir accomplished long ago by placing an indicted war criminal, Ahmad Harun, in charge of humanitarian affairs.

Sudan's UN ambassador has charged that the ICC will have "disastrous consequences" on the peace process in Darfur. This could only be true if there was evidence of a real and substantive peace process in the first place. In reality, however, the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) languishes without judicial provisions and two alleged abusers are the sole signatories - President Bashir's government and the rebel leader Minni Minawi, now a conspirator of Bashir, who has been accused of heinous crimes himself.

Holding Bashir accountable for his acts may be the only way to achieve real and substantive peace in Darfur. That is why the United States, which says it wants the ICC work on Darfur to succeed, as well as its fellow Security Council members, must not suspend the prosecution of Bashir as a threat to international peace and security under Article 16 of the ICC's Rome Treaty.


Ariela Blätter, a human rights lawyer, is the Director of the Crisis Prevention and Response Center at Amnesty International (AI). She serves on the US Genocide Prevention Task Force and launched AI's acclaimed project "Eyes on Darfur," using satellite technology to monitor human rights violations. The views expressed here are her own.

John2
08-03-09, 14:36
Dus iemand die direct of indirect miljoenen doden op zijn geweten heeft moet je gewoon laten lopen?
Ik begin nu ook de rellen te begrijpen die de reljongeren organiseren als iemand van hen door justitie word belaagt "liever vrede dan vervolging".
Dan is er maar één antwoord mogelijk "het recht moet zegevieren"

mark61
08-03-09, 20:58
To put justice before peace spells disaster for Sudan


The overzealous pursuit of Omar al-Bashir could ruin years of diplomatic progress.

Na zo'n zin lees ik al niet verder. Wat bezielt zulke lui? Alternatief doen om het alternatief doen?

Olive Yao
09-03-09, 22:20
Na zo'n zin lees ik al niet verder. Wat bezielt zulke lui? Alternatief doen om het alternatief doen?

Diplomatic progress? What diplomatic progress?

mark61
09-03-09, 23:02
Diplomatic progress? What diplomatic progress?

Zet is what I meant.

VerbalSmaeel
10-03-09, 01:46
Diplomatic progress? What diplomatic progress?
Wijsheid van Alex de Waal, expert over de geschiedenis en context van Darfur:

ON HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS: “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 90 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. 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 [the Sudanese leaders] 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 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 will 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/books/2008/11/25/darfur-a-new-history-of-a-long-war-revised-and-updated/

Olive Yao
26-03-09, 21:44
Sterk artikel, het vorige. Het ziet op komende gebeurtenissen en motiveert die.


Sudan wil andere hulporganisaties in Darfur


Khartoem - Sudan zet de deur open voor andere hulporganisaties in Darfur. Die zouden de leemte moeten opvullen die vertrokken hulporganisaties hebben achtergelaten.

Sudan stuurde begin deze maand meer dan tien organisaties weg nadat het Internationaal Strafhof een arrestatiebevel had uitgevaardigd tegen president Omar al-Bashir. Hij is aangeklaagd wegens ernstige misdaden in Darfur.

Bashir trekt zich vooralsnog niets aan van de aanklacht, en is ook niet van plan om zich in eigen land op te sluiten. Momenteel maakt hij een reis langs bevriende Arabische staten. Hij was eerder deze week in Eritrea, daarna in Egypte en donderdag in Libië. Arabische leiders hebben zich steeds tegen het aanhoudingsbevel uitgesproken.

De Nederlandse regering heeft laten weten dat ze zich blijft verzetten tegen het wegsturen van hulporganisaties uit Darfur. Ook in Europees verband is er druk gezet op Sudan om het besluit terug te draaien.

wo (http://www.maroc.nl/forums/showthread.php?goto=firstpost&threadid=268531)

Olive Yao
26-03-09, 21:54
Afrikaanse focus dreigt Internationaal Strafhof fataal te worden (http://www.maroc.nl/forums/showthread.php?t=267302)

Max Stirner
30-03-09, 21:02
Mijnheer Bashir is momenteel op bezoek in Qatar, waar de rode loper letterlijk voor hem wordt uitgerold en waar de Arabische leiders hem als een verloren zoon verwelkomen.


Vrij typisch toch wel weer.

mark61
30-03-09, 21:17
Kwestie van prioriteiten. Solidair met massamoordenaars, laat die blanken de pleuris krijgen. Die negerts ook trouwens.

Max Stirner
30-03-09, 21:46
Kwestie van prioriteiten. Solidair met massamoordenaars, laat die blanken de pleuris krijgen. Die negerts ook trouwens.


Tis te hopen dat de beschaafde wereld deze opgestoken middelvinger ook als zodanig weet te interpreteren en hieruit de juiste conclusies trekt.

mark61
30-03-09, 22:00
Tis te hopen dat de beschaafde wereld deze opgestoken middelvinger ook als zodanig weet te interpreteren en hieruit de juiste conclusies trekt.

De juiste conclusie is dat Qatar olie heeft, lekker dicht bij Iran ligt, en het Qatar Command Center daar dan ook gevestigd is :hihi:

Max Stirner
30-03-09, 22:56
De juiste conclusie is dat Qatar olie heeft, lekker dicht bij Iran ligt, en het Qatar Command Center daar dan ook gevestigd is :hihi:


Mooi. Dan zal het wel niet zo'n probleem zijn om een klein vliegtuigongelukje te ensceneren.

mark61
30-03-09, 23:19
Mooi. Dan zal het wel niet zo'n probleem zijn om een klein vliegtuigongelukje te ensceneren.

Dan worden de Broeders boos. Tenzij ze zeggen dat ze dachten dat het een Airbus van Iran Air was natuurljk.

Olive Yao
07-01-10, 03:01
Hartekreet hulporganisaties over Sudan

Wereldomroep donderdag 7 januari 2010


In Sudan dreigt een nieuwe oorlog als de internationale gemeenschap zich niet meer om het land gaat bekommeren. Dat hebben tien hulporganisaties in een gezamenlijk schrijven laten weten.

Een vijf jaar geleden gesloten vredesakkoord tussen het noorden en zuiden van Sudan staat onder druk door chronische armoede, toenemend geweld en politiek spanningen, schrijven de organisaties. Ze voorzien dat het al mis kan gaan in april, als in Sudan de eerste vrije verkiezingen in 24 jaar worden gehouden. Die worden volgend jaar gevolgd door een referendum over mogelijke definitieve afsplitsing van het zuiden. De hulporganisaties vrezen dat het onder de huidige omstandigheden vrijwel onvermijdelijk is dat de stemmingen uitdraaien op geweld.

Een vredesakkoord maakte in 2005 na ruim twintig jaar een einde aan de burgeroorlog tussen het het overwegend islamitische noorden en het zuiden, waar vooral christenen wonen. Het conflict kostte naar schatting twee miljoen mensen het leven.

Morosian
07-01-10, 10:14
Hartekreet hulporganisaties over Sudan

Wereldomroep donderdag 7 januari 2010


In Sudan dreigt een nieuwe oorlog als de internationale gemeenschap zich niet meer om het land gaat bekommeren.

Afrika is de blinde darm van de wereld. Terwijl de wereldpers in de startblokken staat om elke natte scheet uit het midden-oosten breed uit te meten, sterven maandelijks duizenden mensen in Afrika in stilte als het gevolg van ziekte, honger en geweld.

Het leeuwendeel van de Afrikaanse leiders bestaat uit gewetenloze, corrupte machtswellustelingen met een IQ van kamertemperatuur en de management skills van een kleuter, die elkaar zoveel mogelijk de hand boven het hoofd houden.

Het besturen van een land is in essentie niet veel anders dan het managen van een bedrijf. Het is een moeilijk vak. Ik heb nooit goed begrepen waarom de leider van een land per definitie uit dat land moet komen. Het lijkt me dat je de best mogelijke leider wilt hebben, iemand die het land naar een hoger plan trekt. Bij de meest serieuze, grote bedrijven wordt er niet veel waarde gehecht aan de nationaliteit van haar leider(s). Nationale elftallen hebben veelal buitenlandse coaches. Er lopen zat managers rond in de wereld die met een goed team zo'n land er weer bovenop zouden kunnen krijgen, maar het zal nooit gebeuren. Politiek, geld, sentiment - het is altijd hetzelfde liedje.