Africa, Headlines, Human Rights, North America

RIGHTS-SUDAN: ICC to Probe Darfur Killings

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 6 2005 (IPS) - In a step hailed by human rights activists, the prosecutor of the new International Criminal Court (ICC) announced Monday that he is starting an investigation into suspected crimes against humanity in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The ICC’s action, which could lead to prosecutions of senior Sudanese government officials, will be based on the unprecedented referral of the case by the U.N. Security Council Mar. 31 to The Hague-based tribunal, and is likely based as well on the findings of an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur established last October by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"The ICC prosecutor’s decision to investigate mass slaughter and rape in Darfur will start the wheels of justice turning for the victims of these atrocities," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Programme of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in New York City. "As a U.N. member state, Sudan is obligated to cooperate with the ICC investigation."

The commission, which confirmed that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed in Darfur since a rebel uprising there in early 2003, provided sealed dossiers on 51 Sudanese individuals, reportedly including top officials in Khartoum, whom it deemed responsible for the violence.

Recent studies estimate that between 180,000 and 400,000 people – the vast majority of them members of African ethnicities – have died over the past two and a half years. As many as 2.5 million others have been uprooted as the result of a counter-insurgency campaign that has featured government attacks and bombings and raids by government-backed Arab militias, called the Janjaweed.

The announcement by the ICC’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, comes amid stepped-up diplomatic activity to halt the violence.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has announced that two rebel groups and the government will resume peace talks Friday in Abuja in the wake of a visit to Darfur, Sudan’s western-most region, by Annan and a high-level team from the African Union (AU), the regional group which is sponsoring the talks, as well as an observation mission in Darfur that currently consists of about 2,500 soldiers and police from AU member countries.

At the same time, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, under pressure from Democratic and Christian Right lawmakers, has been trying to facilitate the rapid enlargement of the AU monitoring force and coordination of logistical support – mostly in the transport – from the European Union (EU) and NATO.

Last week, Bush himself referred again – after a nearly six-month hiatus – to the violence in Darfur as "genocide" and stressed that he was consulting closely with NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin who has committed some 100 Canadian soldiers to logistical operations.

International human rights and Africa activists have argued that Washington and other western capitals should offer more than logistical support given the scale of the destruction and the fact that the violence has continued.

In particular, they have called for the U.N. Security Council to give the AU’s monitoring operation the authority to use force to defend civilians and to supplement it with a multinational component on the ground.

Darfur is the size of the U.S. state of California, and the AU force, which is supposed to reach 12,000 by the end of the year, is simply too small to carry out its mandate effectively, according to the activists. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), a peace-monitoring organisation, a minimum presence of 12,000-15,000 personnel is needed by the end of July. "It has become apparent that the AU, with the best will in the world, will be unable, without substantial further international support, to deploy an effective force of anything like this size in anything like this time-frame," said ICG president and former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans late last month. Washington, however, has downplayed the urgency of the situation despite Bush’s own view that it constitutes "genocide." In a press conference before leaving for Sudan last week, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who has taken the lead on Darfur within the administration, said that the government in Khartoum has grounded its helicopter gun-ships and curtailed its attacks. "I believe the government is working towards trying to find (a) political solution," he said, adding that most of the violence has been confined so far this year to "incidents of banditry, rapes, and …other attacks," mostly by the Janjaweed. Zoellick also said he considered action by the ICC to be helpful in putting pressure on the government to comply with previous Security Council resolutions calling on it to end the violence and disarm the Janjaweed. "This is an important sort of diplomatic dimension," he told reporters. "In other words, it hangs over people as a sense (that) the United Nations, countries around the world, were sending a signal about accountability for these actions. It’s a useful deterrence against others and allows us to emphasise a tool about the need to stop the violence from local militias to in-between government officials to high-level government officials." Zoellick’s support for the ICC’s work was considered significant because Washington has strongly opposed the tribunal since its inception as a potential threat to U.S. sovereignty and freedom of action. It went along with the Security Council’s referral of the Darfur case only reluctantly after it became clear that its proposal for a special AU tribunal had no chance of being approved. Fearful that Washington may not cooperate with the ICC’s investigation, activists called on the administration to turn over all the evidence – which is reported to be quite substantial – it has acquired about atrocities in Sudan to the prosecutor. "Now the president must ensure that the United States does everything it can to help bring those responsible to justice," said Charles Brown, president of Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), formerly the World Federalist Society. Activists are also concerned that Sudan may not cooperate with the ICC, which, unlike in Sudan, has so far only investigated cases – in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo – where the government requested the ICC’s invervention. "Certainly the Khartoum regime has consistently and adamantly refused to countenance even the legitimacy of the U.N. referral, and has made thoroughly clear that it will extradite no Sudanese nationals to The Hague, or allow Sudanese citizens to serve as witnesses under subpoena," said Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts who has played a prominent role in the international campaign to draw attention to the killings in Darfur.

"Senior members of the regime are clearly already under sealed ‘indictment’ at The Hague and have no incentive to abstain from further crimes against humanity, or indeed genocidal acts," he told IPS.

"Khartoum is so adept at playing the international community," added Salih Booker, head of Africa Action, a grassroots lobby group that has played a prominent role in rallying public opinion here on Darfur.

"They always give just enough to make it appear they’re cooperating or may still cooperate. So they let the (U.N.) Commission (of Inquiry) into the country, but then didn’t allow it to investigate the sites of mass graves or let it carry out the number of interviews with survivors that the ICC will want to do."