International Justice/ICC: Jul ‘08

When the International Criminal Court prosecutor asked judges to indict Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, IWPR staff in The Hague worked closely with trainees in Khartoum to analyse the consequences.



The July announcement came after months of speculation about whether the prosecutor, Luis Moreno- OCampo, would seek to indict Sudan’s top man, after having told the United Nations Security Council that the whole of Sudan’s state apparatus was being used to destroy Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit communities.



We coupled our expertise of the ICC in The Hague with the knowledge of our Sudanese trainees in Khartoum, who fed back first-hand information about local reaction to the indictment.



Our trainees told us that street protests over the ICC’s latest charges were organised by the government; the crowds of demonstrators were swollen by members of Al-Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party; and that the practice of censoring independent newspapers has been tightened since the prosecutor’s announcement.



The Khartoum journalists told us that the new guidance, issued by the security services to editors, said that any report or article seeming or suspected of being supportive of the ICC or its prosecutor will lead to the suspension of the newspaper in question and the confiscation of its property.



In order to gauge the atmosphere amongst those most directly affected by violence in Darfur –people forced from their homes into camps for displaced people – we called IWPR contacts living in camps near Al-Fashir and Nyala.



While welcoming the prosecutor’s announcement, they told IWPR that the situation may get worse if the UN’s beleaguered UNAMID peacekeeping force remains powerless to fully protect internally displaced people.



They reminded us that while indictments are being considered in the corridors of the ICC in The Hague, violence in Darfur continues on a daily basis, with looting, arrests of civilians by security forces, and women raped in the bush while collecting firewood.



Our team also contacted UNAMID representatives in Darfur to verify accounts that non-essential UN staff were being pulled from the region for fear of retributive attacks against peacekeepers.



Conmenting on IWPR’s coverage of the lastest ICC indictment, the Sudanforum blog said that while Al-Bashir’s ruling NCP has “flushed money into its PR machines, they must be really disappointed that not only IWPR’s justice journalists, but national journalists [they worked with] too are resisting”.



We also mobilised our network of trainees in other ICC situation countries to gauge reaction for the indictment of the Sudanese president.



IWPR trainee Rosebell Kagumire in Kampala wrote a piece assessing President Museveni’s refusal to join other African heads of state in condemning the ICC – a major setback for the Al-Bashir as he tries to rally support from fellow African leaders.



Kagumire explained that Khartoum has been a major backer of the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, a rebel group which fought a long war in northern Uganda from 1986 to 2006. The ICC issued indictments for the LRA’s five top leaders, but three have subsequently been killed.