Jakaya Kikwete blasts ICC for bias

[BabuK]

President Jakaya Kikwete


As President Jakaya Kikwete is busy packing to go in the next two months, he blasted the International Criminal Court (ICC) yesterday, accusing the world guarantor of justice of bias for discriminately taking African leaders to task while turning a blind eye to European culprits.

He became outspoken of the world justice in Dar es Salaam during the XVIth Annual Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Lawyers Association General Meeting that held together lawyers from SADC-member states.

He was particularly tough on ICC with regard to his neighbouring Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta who had, according to him, an unfounded case to answer in Hague, saying "ICC should immediately stop persecuting African leaders."

However, Kenyatta has recently had his criminal charges withdrawn from ICC.

"There is quite a number of European leaders with dubious record of crimes against humanity but they are neither questioned nor stand trials," he said, adding that African leaders were dragged to court for lighter offences.

He said ICC has been in the fore in persecuting African leaders like Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir who avoided arrest in South Africa on charges of masterminding genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.

"Powerful nations deserve prosecution the same way as the weaker ones," he said.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, an ICC-wanted suspect who Libyan authorities refuse to hand over is also in Kikwete's list of culprits unfoundedly taken victim of the court that has only convicted two Africans, namely Thomas Lubanga Dyilo and Germain Katanga,both warlords from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is not the first time that Tanzanians, Kenyans and Ugandans had condemned ICC for bias, but it is the first time the official Tanzania goes international in trading criticism against the revered institution in Europe.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda expressed a will to quit the organisation and urged other African leaders to follow suit during Kenyan Independence Day celebrations in December.

He said he would raise the agenda for African nations to quit ICC during the next African Union meeting.

But Dr Helen Kijo-Bisimba, Executive Director of Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) does not concur with her President, saying it is not ICC that goes to Africa, but African countries themselves that present their cases to an organization they were willing to join.

She said there were more European leaders taken to ICC than there were Africans since the establishment of the court in 1998 in the Hague.

But she also questioned Kikwete's resort to trumpet the issue at the moment when he is about to quit and prior to general elections that call for campaign, saying it was not a coincidence as her institute had noted a lot of human rights violations during his reign.

She said Kikwete was using the opportunity to respond to ICC President, Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi following his visit in the Hague a few months ago.

Meanwhile, president of SADC Lawyers Association Gilberto Caldeira said there was a need to publicly and boldly advocate human rights for the enactment of laws that would bridge the gap between the rulers and the citizenry.



Source: THE GUARDIAN

 

[Ryaro wa Ryaro]

Tanzania ni Signatory wa Rome Statute, Tutaendelea Kuheshimu Maamuzi yetu, So kiongozi wetu Ikatokea Akasababisha sintofahamu Basi

ICC Lazima Akumbane na Mkono wa Sharia.Kama Nchi Hatuwezi Kujificha Kwenye Kichaka Cha Upendeleo wa ICC, such that Kiongozi

Akishindwa Kutenda Haki na Kusabaisha Sintofahamu Aachwe tu. Hapana Nadhani Tuendelee Kuheshimu Utawala wa Sheria na Haki za

binadam.

NB: Kwa Nini Iwe Kipindi Hiki Wakati Tunaenda Kwenye Uchaguzi ???

 

[Ernesto Che]

Anajihami mapema, kama anataka kuijua ICC vizuri basi atumie mabavu kutulazimisha makufuli wake sisi tunamtaka lowassa hivyo akitumia nguvu ICC watakula nae sahani moja

 

[Crocodiletooth]

WHY IN DOUBT?
KWANINI AIOGOPE?
AU ANAMPANGO WA KUTOTENDA HAKI?
******THE HAGUE******
ii

 

[KILIVITE]

Anajihami maana anafahamu kwa matendo aliyoyafanya na yale anayotarajia kuyafanya katika harakati hizi za uchaguzi zinaweza kumpeleka huko.

 

[Focus120]

Those who cast the Vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.. I.C.C is for those thinking democracy is for the few selfish, self centered pretend to be leaders of the people.

 

[bibi.com]

wewe na nani mnamtaka lowassa.??? vumilia muda wa uchaguzi utafika.!!! Kuhusu ICC na Afrika, amejaribu kuongea ukweli uliopo kutokana na kesi zilizoamuliwa na zinazoendelea kuhusu viongozi wa kiafrika. Matukio mengi ya Afrika yamefanikishwa na viongozi wa Afrika na walio nje ya Afrika, kwa pamoja. Lakini mazingira ya mashtaka huendeshwa kwa kuzingatia tawala za kiafrika tu bila ya kuhusishwa kwa mabepari kutoka sehemu tofauti na Afrika.

Kama uko na ushahidi wa mabepari kuhusika na uchinjaji, ubakaji, kung'ang'ania madaraka kwa afrika upeleke ICC. ulishawahi ona mahakama ya afrika inahukumu waheshimiwa? Kama zipo ni chache sana. Lakini kwa wenzetu hawana ujinga no matter wewe ni nani. Huku kwetu wenye pesa wako juu ya sheria. Acha ICC iwepo kwanza hao viongozi wa afrika wewe unao uchungu nao? Maana wao wenyewe hawana uchungu na sisi maskini acha wafungwe. Somehow ICC imefanya baadhi ya viongozi wa kiafrika kuwa na discipline la sivyo tungeona maajabu zaidi

 

[Focus120]

so what is democracy by-the-way.??? At which level should we practice democracy.??? Who's democracy traitor.??? There's no democracy in Tanzania, even in our political parties. But there's primitive democracy because there's no true democracy. However the primitive democracy system in Tanzania does work through irregularly and is available due to lack of education, tribalism, regionalism and religion sanctification.

There you have it..
1. Lack education
2. Tribalism
3. Regionalim
4. Religious Sanctification

Cc Maziku Masunga Jr.

Democracy as I like to frame it a rule of the majority and respect for the Minority.

The struggle for democracy is primarily a political struggle on the form of governance, thus involving the reconstitution of the state (a need for katiba ya wananchi). No one claims that democracy means and aims at social emancipation. Rather it is located on the terrain of political liberalism so, at best, creating conditions for the emancipatory project. This is important to emphasize in the light of the hegemony of neo-liberal discourse which tends to emasculate democracy of its social and historical dimensions and present it as an ultimate nirvana.

On these premises, although liberation was no doubt a democratic struggle, its articulation as a struggle for liberation gave democracy a social dimension, which the neo-liberal ideology eschews and avoids. In turn, the tension between political democracy and social emancipation constantly beleaguered the liberation and independence movements. This tension inevitably got enmeshed in the cold-war ideological confrontation between the two power blocks under respective superpowers. The cold war confrontation not only “disfigured” the liberation and democratic discourse in Africa, it turned the newly and fledging independent states into pawns, and the continent into a chessboard, of proxy hot wars. The consequences of those hot wars have been devastating for the continent. Today’s failed states were once upon a time the darlings or demons — depending on the point of view you take — of global hegemonic powers.

Military coups became the order of the day in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The targets were nationalist regimes, which wanted to carve out an independent space and give their sovereignty a modicum of reality. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the American and Belgium manipulation and involvement (Blum 1986, 174). A surrogate regime of Mobutu was put in place.

The Congo, and its people, including, neighboring states in Central Africa have since seen no peace. Kwame Nkrumah, who early realized the importance of continental unity and the curse of imperial exploitation through multinationals, was overthrown in a CIA engineered coup. That country too has not totally regained stability and development since.

Between January 1956 and the end of 1985 there were sixty successful coups in Africa, that is, an average of two every year (Hutchful 1991, 183). In 1966 alone there were eight military coup d'etat and by 1986, out of some 50 African states, only 18 were under civilian rule. Behind virtually every coup was the hand of one or the other imperial power, and, more often than not, the US. Overthrowing nationalist regimes and installing tyrannical dictatorships was, then, a “fair game” for today’s champions of democracy and “good governance"!

The regimes, which for various reasons, escaped the fate of military take-over inevitably turned authoritarian one-party states under some or the other form of developmentalist rhetoric. The one-party rule and curbing of individual freedoms was presented as a trade-off between democracy and development. Even that trade-off did not work. Unlike a Cuba in the socialist sphere or a South Korea in the capitalist sphere, none of the African states was able to wrench itself free of the neo-colonial economic structures imposed by colonialism and perpetuated by the imperial world market.

By the end of 1970s, many African states, regardless of the nature of their states or their economic policies or ideological orientation, found themselves in deep economic crisis with high debts, low or negative growth rates, hyper inflation and massive transfers of surpluses through various ways, to the developed North.

Meanwhile, the North, the US and Europe, was smarting under Reaganite and Thatcherite economics and politics. The general swing towards the right gripped even the social democratic northern Europe. The humiliating defeat in Vietnam, the newly-found power of the oil-producing countries in OPEC and the 1979 Iranian revolution dealt a heavy body blow to the hegemony of imperialism, in particular to the United States. Thus the Second Cold War in which the Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberal axis not only further fuelled the fires of ideological warriorism but also rabid anti-Third Worldism, which was directed equally against nationalist and self-identified socialist regimes.The combination of economic crisis at home and the rise of neo-liberalism globally made many an African country a ready victim of the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes or SAPs. SAP came with its stringent conditionalties — liberalization of markets, balancing of budgets, removal of subsidies, so-called cost-sharing in the provision of social services, etc.. African states, including the most nationalist among them like Tanzania, were in no position to resist. They eventually gave in, wreaking havoc in the already fragile economies on the one hand, and the welfare of the most disadvantaged of their people, on the other. Import-substitution industrialization, which had been one of the developmental planks of the nationalist period, was virtually wiped out as industry after industry was bankrupted, unable to withstand the imports of cheap goods. Agriculture stagnated. There was little the governments could do beyond exhorting the peasants to work harder. Social indicators like education, health, water and electricity began to decline. In short, SAPs sapped whatever vitality there was in the fragile African economies. Even the moderate social achievements of the nationalist period in education, health, and water. were swept away.

African democracy is of its own kind.

 

[Mtangoo]

Naomba kujua kama Rome Statue ni "forever binding". Kama siyo na wanaona inawabana kwanini bado wamejiunga?

 

[Wambandwa]

JK, there is no way you'd avoid being prosecuted if the coming elections'd influenced by your intervention.

 

[mbingunikwetu]

Atakayevuruga na kuiba kura mwaka huu kutasababisha maafa makubwa yatakayopelekea ICC itie timu bongo! na tutaiunga mkono!

 

[Shing Yui]

sio jambo jema hata kidogo kutokana na matukio yanayoendelea Afrika hasa hasa katika kipindi cha uchaguzi. Lakini huwa kuna nchi wahisani kwa vyama vilivyo madarakani na marafiki wahisani kwa vyama vishiriki katika chaguzi kuu. Dhima kubwa ya wahisani ni kuhakikisha malengo yao yanatimia kupitia michango ya kifedha wanayoisadia serikali au vyama vya siasa. Kwa hiyo uhusika wa viongozi wa kiafrika na mabepari huwa unaanzia hapa.!!

Na kuhusu maamuzi ya ICC ni vyema yakazingatia wahusika wa matukio na wanaofanikisha matukio kupitia michango yao ya kifedha na kirasilimali ambayo mala nyingi hutoka nje ya Afrika kama misaada ya wahisani.

Hao wahisani wawe na limit sio kutanguliza maslahi yao mbele kuliko wananchi wa taifa lenyewe hadi kupelekea sintofaham.

 

[Shing Yui]

Ni wanasiasa na jamii nzima kuweza kujitambua, hii ndio itakuwa kinga bora zaidi. Katika mfumo wa chaguzi huwa kuna makundi matatu; wapiga kura, wanasiasa na wasimamizi wa chaguzi. Lakini hili kundi la nne, wahisani ndio wana nguvu zaidi kwenye chaguzi nyingi za kiafrika. Matukio yanayoendelea Afrika ni maslahi ya wahisani kwa kutumia ujinga wa baadhi ya wanasiasa.

Kwa mfano idadi ya vifo vinavyotokana na matukio ya kisiasa na kiutawala ni kubwa kuliko ile idadi ya vifo vinavyotokana na maambukizi ya magonjwa ya zinaa katika nchi ya Sudani Kusini. Hii imetokana na wanasiasa wa Juba kuruhusu uhusika wa mataifa ya nje katika mambo ya ndani ya nchi yao.

Umeongea ukweli mtupu.
Ndio maana ukisikia habari ya goli la mkono ujue hawa watawala wamekuwa kama wamewauzia hawa wahisani nchi ndio maana wanajiamini hivo. Ikitokea watawala wakatofautiana na wahisani na upinzani wakashikamana na wahisani basi ujue upinzani watapita ikulu la sivyo ndio vita vinachochewa.

 

[bibi.com]

sio jambo jema hata kidogo kutokana na matukio yanayoendelea Afrika hasa hasa katika kipindi cha uchaguzi. Lakini huwa kuna nchi wahisani kwa vyama vilivyo madarakani na marafiki wahisani kwa vyama vishiriki katika chaguzi kuu. Dhima kubwa ya wahisani ni kuhakikisha malengo yao yanatimia kupitia michango ya kifedha wanayoisadia serikali au vyama vya siasa. Kwa hiyo uhusika wa viongozi wa kiafrika na mabepari huwa unaanzia hapa.!!

Na kuhusu maamuzi ya ICC ni vyema yakazingatia wahusika wa matukio na wanaofanikisha matukio kupitia michango yao ya kifedha na kirasilimali ambayo mala nyingi hutoka nje ya Afrika kama misaada ya wahisani.

Mi sioni shida mabepari wakisaidia lakini ksma sisi waafrika tuko ns akili nzuri why tupigane hata kama tunapewa pesa? Wewe ukipewa pesa nyingi na mtu ugombane na kaka yako utafanya hivyo? Hao mabepari hawajatushikia bunduki tunaowesa wa kukataa na kujisimamia bila wao. Sasa sisi tunachinjana mkipelekwa mahakamni mnasema kuna mkono nyuma yake hapo ndio tunaonekana wapumbavu. Tungekuwa na akili hata huyo beoari mwenyewe asingetusogelea na kama akisogea anasogea kwa akilikwa kuwa anajua misimamo yetu.

 

[Hatakama]

I think my president is ICC bound, start searching for a best lawyer mr president

 

[ruzen]

wewe na nani mnamtaka lowassa.??? vumilia muda wa uchaguzi utafika.!!! Kuhusu ICC na Afrika, amejaribu kuongea ukweli uliopo kutokana na kesi zilizoamuliwa na zinazoendelea kuhusu viongozi wa kiafrika. Matukio mengi ya Afrika yamefanikishwa na viongozi wa Afrika na walio nje ya Afrika, kwa pamoja. Lakini mazingira ya mashtaka huendeshwa kwa kuzingatia tawala za kiafrika tu bila ya kuhusishwa kwa mabepari kutoka sehemu tofauti na Afrika.

Yeye na mimi na wengiii

 

[iArmaniAdamson]

well we signed up for this for good purpose, we cannot try to criticize it when they do their work. I know to African leaders there has been ring fencing in recent years but we live in democratic world and we have to respect these policing agencies we have put in place.