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RIGHTS: Historic ICC Arrest Warrants Evoke Praise, Concern

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 15 2005 (IPS) - Confirmation by the two-year-old International Criminal Court that it has issued its first arrest warrants, for Joseph Kony and four other commanders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, has provoked both praise and concern from western human rights and peace groups.

Friday’s confirmation by the two-year-old International Criminal Court (ICC) that it has issued its first arrest warrants, for Joseph Kony and four other commanders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, has provoked both praise and concern from western human rights and peace groups.

Both Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International hailed the warrants against the LRA commanders, who are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as an important step in bringing to justice individuals who have terrorised much of northern Uganda for the last 19 years. They also called for all governments to cooperate in apprehending the accused for trial at ICC headquarters in The Hague.

“With today’s arrest warrants, the ICC has opened the door for justice to be done,” said Richard Dicker, HRW’s director for International Justice. “The people of northern Uganda have long suffered terrible abuses without any chance of redress.”

Both groups, however, expressed disappointment that the ICC has not moved as aggressively against Ugandan government officials and military officers who they say have committed similar abuses but who are beneficiaries of an amnesty law passed by the Parliament.

“The failure of the (ICC) Prosecutor to seek arrest warrants against Ugandan government forces and their civilian superior is a matter of deep concern because the Ugandan prosecutors have failed to investigate and prosecute such crimes during the 19-year conflict,” Amnesty said in a statement issued from London Friday.

Other analysts have also expressed concerns that the warrants have effectively ended peace efforts led by a former Ugandan minister, Betty Bigombe, and backed by the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Norway. Once officially charged by the ICC with crimes against humanity, the LRA commanders cannot receive amnesty as part of any political settlement of the conflict.

Bigombe herself complained last week that the court had “rushed too much”, as a result of which, “There is now no hope of getting (the LRA commanders) to surrender.” The Roman Catholic Church, which had also helped facilitate the mediation effort, also expressed fears that a political settlement has now been made more difficult.

In a column published Friday by the International Herald Tribune, Katherine Southwick, who has authored several reports on Uganda for the Washington-based Refugee Law Project, charged that the ICC’s action, which will make it impossible for LRA commanders to receive any form of amnesty, may actually expose innocent civilians and international aid workers in northern Uganda to greater danger.

“Now international aid organisations are scaling back their operations in the north for fear that the LRA will associate ICC arrest warrants with the international community,” she wrote.

But Amnesty said the issuance of the warrants had to be considered an important step forward. “The decision by the Prosecutor to proceed with issuing arrest warrants and, in doing so, resisting calls to suspend the investigation in favour of further political negotiations sends a clear message that without justice, there can be no prospect of a lasting peace for the region,” it said.

The LRA, a messianic movement that launched its first attacks in the mid-1980s, is blamed for the killings of tens of thousands of northern Ugandans but became particularly notorious for the abduction of some 30,000 children to serve as soldiers, porters and sex slaves over the past 20 years.

Indeed, each night, according to a recent HRW report, as many as 40,000 children – known as “night commuters” – flee their own homes in the northern Uganda countryside to seek the relative safety of the towns in order to hide from LRA raids.

Sheltered for many years in southern Sudan, the group is also held responsible for the displacement of some 1.6 million people, most of whom still live in camps where they have been at the mercy of the Ugandan military. Despite its nominal role as protector, the military has also been accused by HRW and Amnesty, among others, of committing serious abuses, including murder, rape, and beatings, against their charges.

In one of his first formal acts as ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo opened a formal investigation of the LRA and the situation in northern Uganda at the request of the government of President Yoweri Museveni last year. Under the Rome Statute that forms the legal basis for the ICC, the new court can only prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity committed after July 2002, when the statute took effect.

In addition to Kony, who was charged with 12 counts of crimes against humanity and 21 counts of war crimes, his chief deputy, Vincent Otti, and three other commanders were ordered arrested.

“Kony is exactly the type of person for whom the ICC was created – an amoral warlord whose crimes include murder, rape, kidnapping, slavery and amputation,” noted Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), formerly known as the World Federalist Society and a major backer of the ICC in the United States.

But, like other groups, CGS called for all parties to “work in partnership with the Court to not only ensure Kony’s swift capture, but protect his victims, their families and witnesses from reprisals”.

Analysts have said that the LRA has become weaker over the past several months, in major part due to the loss of support from Sudan. Kony is still believed to be hiding in Sudan, and Ugandan officials last week called publicly on Khartoum to seize the rebel leader.

But significant elements of the LRA have reportedly slipped across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the face of threats by Museveni, whose troops have intervened in the DRC several times over the past decade, the Kinshasa government reportedly sent two army battalions into the area last week. The U.N. peacekeeping operation in the DRC also sent forces into the area.

“Congolese forces, with U.N. peacekeepers’ support, will have to shoot through a shield of traumatised child captives to reach the leaders,” noted Southwick. “Apprehending them may not even be possible; the Ugandan Army has been unable to do so for 19 years, even with Sudanese cooperation.”