Dictators Don't Need Courts-- Just Ask Putin
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Russia doesn't have an independent judiciary separate from the political system. Authoritarians-- Trump included-- don't get the concept and don't support the principles behind it. The direct impetus for the withdrawal was the International Court's report on Monday describing Russia's annexation of Crimea as "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation," and termed it "an occupation," which is not Putin's interpretation of Crimea's reunification with Mother Russia-- something like the way the western Czechoslavakia (the Sudetenland) was reunited with the German Fatherland in 1938. Since there were no tweets from Trump on this I turned to my second favorite source of news, The Guardian, which reported on Putin's move more extensively than anything in the U.S. pop-media. They also noted the coincidence of timing and how the withdrawal came "a day after the court published a report classifying the Russian annexation of Crimea as an occupation." They also mentioned that several authoritarian African counties have been as dismissive of the court as Russia. The Russian foreign ministry denounced the Court's work as "one-sided and inefficient" and claimed the court has "failed to live up to hopes of the international community." According to The Guardian, "the repudiation of the tribunal, though symbolic, is a fresh blow to efforts to establish a global legal order for pursuing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity... The resurgence of nationalist politics, apparent in Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, suggests the tide may be turning against international legal institutions."
“This is a symbolic gesture of rejection, and says a lot about Russia’s attitude towards international justice and institutions,” said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch (HRW). “On a practical level it will not make much difference, but it is a statement of direction: it shows that Russia no longer has any intention of ratifying the treaty in future or of cooperating with the court.”
In January, the Russian foreign ministry said it would reconsider its attitude to the court after rulings on the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.
At the time, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said: “Russia stood at the origins of the ICC’s founding, voted for its establishment and has always cooperated with the agency. Russia hoped that the ICC will become an important factor in consolidating the rule of law and stability in international relations.
“Unfortunately, to our mind, this did not happen. In this regard, and in the light of the latest decision, the Russian federation will be forced to fundamentally review its attitude towards the ICC.”
On Tuesday, the court, which is based in The Hague, published a report that recognised the annexation of Crimea as a military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and classified it as an occupation.
“According to information received, the situation in the Crimea and Sevastopol is equivalent to the international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian federation,” a preliminary report from the ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda stated.
“The Russian federation employed members of its armed forces to gain control over parts of the territory of Ukraine without the consent of the government of Ukraine.”
Russia has insisted that Crimea voluntarily joined Russia after a referendum, but international observers say the referendum was hastily organised, did not meet international standards, and was conducted as Russian troops swept through the peninsula. Having initially denied vehemently that Russian troops were involved in the takeover, Putin later admitted it.
Russia may also be concerned about ICC jurisdiction in Syria, where its forces have been repeatedly accused of carrying out war crimes in recent months. HRW and other organisations have called for the ICC to investigate events in Syria.
The ICC has struggled to obtain widespread international acceptance. The US, India and China as well as most Middle Eastern states have declined to ratify the Rome statute which established the court.
...Speaking on Wednesday at the annual assembly in The Hague of states parties signed up to the Rome Statute, Fatou Bensouda, the court’s chief prosecutor, said she deplored recent withdrawals from the Rome Statute. “Any act that may undermine the global movement towards greater accountability for atrocity crimes and a ruled-based international order in this new century is surely-- when objectively viewed-- regrettable,” she said.
The ICC’s president, Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, who is an Argentinian, said: “The court has continued to do the work for which it was created and has made significant achievements in addressing crimes of concern to the international community as a whole such as the use of child soldiers, sexual violence in conflict, attacks on civilians and the destruction of cultural property.
International criminal justice, she added, is “a long-term project” and should remain a top priority “in order to bring perpetrators of crimes to justice and protect victims across the world equally.”
We're going to take a closer look at monstrous Filipino thug Rodrigo Duterte later tonight, but I should mention that this morning he was quick to announce that he's thinking of withdrawing the Philippines from the International Criminal Court as well. He doesn't like being criticized for the extrajudicial executions that are the hallmark of his miserable career in politics.
Labels: International Criminal Court, Putin, Ukraine
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 6:00 PM
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4 Comments:
Quote Wikipedia: "The United States is not a participant in the International Criminal Court (ICC)." tinyurl.com/obscs3v
The ICC statement re Russia/Crimea lends credence to the interpretation that the ICC is no more than "just another element of Western 'soft power', ... " That, and the absence in said court of cases against the myriad of Bush administration genocidal monsters. tinyurl.com/hc5aoym
Other articles on the ICC outside the realm of dedicated, knee-jerk, anti-Russia media can be found here: tinyurl.com/zef4an7
By the 1997 Partition Treaty with the Ukraine, Russia was allowed to keep its Black Sea fleet in the Crimea along with a maximum of 25,000 troops. As dramatically as it was described, Russian troops did not have to "sweep" anywhere. They were already stationed in the Crimea with the consent of the Ukraine. I'd suggest that a good part of the motivation for the 2014 US-engineered coup in Ukraine was the 2010 renewal of this agreement for an additional 25 years.
The Crimean naval base is Russia's only warm water port. The chances of Russia relinquishing it in this instance was about equivalent to the chances of the US giving up its San Diego naval base in response to a Russian-engineered coup in Baja California.
The magical thinking that refuses to understand this is the basis of my succinct outline of US foreign policy:
"1) Foreign rulers may not kill “their own people.” Killing “their” totally innocent people is the exclusive right of the USofA.
2) Foreign rulers may pursue only “the global interests” of the USofA. Pursuit of “their own interests” will result in penalties as outlined in “1),” above."
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I suspect the fascist governors of Ohio, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin were not going to let anyone, including Putin, interfere with THEIR rigging of the 2016 election. The Dem establishment hammered on the idiotic Russia-hack notion to 1) cover for their inadequate candidate and 2) its own historic reluctance/inability to deal with its opponent party's frank election fraud since AT LEAST 2000.
John Puma
I suspect the real reason you like Hillary more than most Stein voters, is that you buy into American imperialism more than most of us do. The Crimea was traditionally part of Russia, and is 90% Russian because they are native to the area, and it voted to join Russia. There naval base has been there since Peter the Great. It only became apart of the Ukraine under Khrushchev. If countries are not allowed to change their boarders as a result of Hitler, than what was the excuse for breaking the former Soviet Union up?
There is no evidence Putin did the hacks or the the Establishment would have produced it.
I'm reading of anomalies in vote machine counting in 5 swing states and in precincts/districts with no paper trail and/or online access to tabulations. Things like big overturnouts where states as a whole had underturnouts, 10-20% differences between "results" and exit polling and so forth.
While the fraud in 2000 and 2004 were overt, this, if it is fraud, is much more esoteric and would require a very high level of sophistication.
If our elections are even hackABLE, we have the pussies in the democrap party to thank. They took it in 2000 and turned the other cheek in 2004. And in 2008 and 2012 there had been circumstantial indications that kkkarl rove had a (limited and targeted) hack in the bag but it either didn't work or was thwarted (allegedly by other hackers calling themselves "Anonymous").
And finally, the democraps have a long and sordid history of cowardice in enforcement of elections. Nixon committed treason by negotiating with the Vietnamese outside of the government in order to delay a cease fire so he could win the '68 election... and LBJ pussied out and did nothing; Reagan committed treason in the same way wrt the Iranians over the hostages in '80... and Carter pussied out and did nothing; cheney and bush were both from texas meaning they could not run on the same ticket (it's in the constitution... look it up) and the democraps didn't even bring it up. The media did; and then the democraps allowed cheney to claim he lived in Wyoming which had not been true since he left congress to run Halliburton.
Whether it was the Russians or republicans who may have goosed R counts in WI, MI, OH, PA and IN doesn't matter. The fucktard democraps have never been interested in voting fidelity, as the DNC proved in the primaries in NY, NV, AZ and elsewhere.
And voters themselves never bother with such minutia... not while a kardashian is showing her tits.
I'm reading of anomalies in vote machine counting in 5 swing states and in precincts/districts with no paper trail and/or online access to tabulations. Things like big overturnouts where states as a whole had underturnouts, 10-20% differences between "results" and exit polling and so forth.
While the fraud in 2000 and 2004 were overt, this, if it is fraud, is much more esoteric and would require a very high level of sophistication.
If our elections are even hackABLE, we have the pussies in the democrap party to thank. They took it in 2000 and turned the other cheek in 2004. And in 2008 and 2012 there had been circumstantial indications that kkkarl rove had a (limited and targeted) hack in the bag but it either didn't work or was thwarted (allegedly by other hackers calling themselves "Anonymous").
And finally, the democraps have a long and sordid history of cowardice in enforcement of elections. Nixon committed treason by negotiating with the Vietnamese outside of the government in order to delay a cease fire so he could win the '68 election... and LBJ pussied out and did nothing; Reagan committed treason in the same way wrt the Iranians over the hostages in '80... and Carter pussied out and did nothing; cheney and bush were both from texas meaning they could not run on the same ticket (it's in the constitution... look it up) and the democraps didn't even bring it up. The media did; and then the democraps allowed cheney to claim he lived in Wyoming which had not been true since he left congress to run Halliburton.
Whether it was the Russians or republicans who may have goosed R counts in WI, MI, OH, PA and IN doesn't matter. The fucktard democraps have never been interested in voting fidelity, as the DNC proved in the primaries in NY, NV, AZ and elsewhere.
And voters themselves never bother with such minutia... not while a kardashian is showing her tits.
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