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US
targets Lanka in row over ICC The US, which
relentlessly opposes the newly-created International Criminal Court
(ICC), wants Sri Lanka to sign a bilateral agreement with Washington
that will remove US nationals - accused of war crimes - from the
reach of the Court. The agreements,
which have threatened to undermine the ICC, have already been signed
by 14 countries: Afghanistan, Israel, the Dominican Republic, East
Timor, Gambia, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Micronesia,
Palau, Romania, Tajikistan, Kuwait and Uzbekistan. The US says
it is seeking these agreements because of fears that American soldiers
- whether in Afghanistan or a future Iraq - could be subjected to
"politically motivated" prosecutions abroad. The European
Union, one of the most vociferous advocates of the ICC, is opposed
to the concept of bilateral agreements that may undo all its painstaking
efforts to create a world court designed to bring future war criminals
to justice. Sri Lanka is
under pressure from both parties pulling in two directions. Does
it go with the US or with the EU? As a follow-up
to the peace talks, Sri Lanka is about to launch a massive multi-million
dollar reconstruction project which has to be funded mostly by the
US and the European Union. As a result, it is now walking a political
tightrope trying to keep both parties happy. The Rome Statute
creating the ICC has been signed by over 139 states and ratified
by 83, the latest ratification being South Korea last week. But Sri Lanka
has neither signed nor ratified the statute apparently because some
of our politicians have been haunted by war crimes of the past or
fear the ICC because of possible war crimes of the future. Under the Rome
Statute, only war crimes committed after July 1 this year, the day
the governing treaty went into force, can be brought before the
ICC. For past crimes,
however, Sri Lanka can set up its own domestic tribunal with UN
assistance - on the lines of the special court created by Sierra
Leone recently and a proposed local war crimes tribunal struggling
to be born in Cambodia. Both countries have a notoriety for past
genocidal crimes. When LTTE leader
Velupillai Prabhakaran was recently sentenced to 200 years in prison
by a High Court in Colombo for the 1996 Central Bank bombing, his
spokesman S. P. Thamilchelvan said the LTTE could retaliate by charging
former Sri Lankan political leaders before its own kangaroo courts
in the jungles of the Wanni. As US pressure
has kept mounting, the Sri Lanka government is planning to circumvent
the bilateral agreement by going ahead with the ratification of
the Rome Statute and joining the ICC. The ICC is
authorised to prosecute individuals, including political leaders,
for genocide, crimes against humanity, and other war crimes. Since ethnic
and religious killings characterise most South Asian countries,
both India and Pakistan have felt vulnerable to genocide charges
and refused to be parties to the ICC. According to
the UN country grouping of Asian countries, the only state parties
to the ICC from our region are: Cambodia, East Timor, Fiji, Tajikistan,
the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Mongolia, Cyprus, Jordan and Western
Samoa. The country
grouping has been used in identifying the maximum number of ICC
judges from each region, which also means that the ICC will not
have any judges either from India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka since they
are not state parties - as of last week. Only countries
that have completed ratification of the Rome Statue by November
30 this year will be eligible to nominate judges. In August,
the US came under fire for its proposal to cut off military aid
to countries refusing to shield American peacekeepers from war crimes
prosecutions. The law has
also been described as the "Hague Invasion Act" because
it authorises the use of military force to free US and allied suspects
from detention by the ICC in any part of the world. The UN Security
Council has already agreed to give US peacekeepers a year's exemption
from ICC prosecution but rejected an American proposal for an automatic
renewal of that exemption. But in its
continuing pursuit of immunity from ICC jurisdiction, the US is
pursuing bilateral agreements by exerting pressure on all its friends
and allies. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
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