Coalition Condemns ICC's For Its Bias Against African Leaders

The Coalition for Pan Africanists (CPA) has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to desist from its discriminatory act of prosecuting African.

According to the Coalition, the entire international justice system of the ICC was laddened with unfairness and a secret agenda to prosecute African leaders who are not in the good books of the Western powers.

Addressing the press on the ICC’s bias towards African leaders, Mr Ayuure Kapin, a member of CPA, wondered why the ICC would always call for the persecution of only African leaders purported to have committed crime against humanity while leaving out Western leaders who have also commit similar offences.

He said why was the ICC after Mr Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan, for human right abuses while they had refused to arrest American soldiers for their human rights abuses in Iraq (the Abu Ghraib Prison Camp, affair),  and Afghanistan among others.

“Throughout the brutal and inhuman military campaign by the West in Afghanistan against innocent civilians, not a single  case was brought against them even when our television beamed unto our homes the horrendous bombardment of hospitals manned by Doctors without Borders”, he said.

Mr Kapin said why did the ICC fail to deal with the US and NATO troops after the UN reported in 2008 that they had murdered 828 non-combatants in Afghanistan.

He praised President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda for opposing the recommendation by the ICC, to put the Lord’s Resistant Army rebels on trial, as he deemed the ICC system to be retributive and opposing to our African system but rather called for the use of home grown or traditional justice.

Mr Kapin said the African race had come under yet another form of colonialism which was using the ICC as it tool to oppress the people on the continent.

He said although the Coalition would not condone war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by some African leaders, they did not have much faith in the type of justice system delivered by the ICC.

“We, therefore, call on the AU to strengthen the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, as well as the isolation and sanctioning of human right violators and leaders who come to power through coups”.

He praised the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) for playing host to an African conference on of the how the continent could deal with related issues and biases of the ICC against Africans.