“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ― Voltaire1
CPI: An entity subject to the interests of the West Comments
When I refer to the West and in relation to this article, the control over the International Criminal Court, I specifically refer to the dominance in broad spheres of our daily lives: economic, military, cultural, media by countries led by the United States and its allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) along with regimes such as Canada, Australia and entities, which are often used as front men, such as the case of the Israeli regime.
Group of countries that, since the origin of the United Nations (UN) and the establishment of treaties, statutes, conventions and various legal frameworks aimed at guaranteeing respect for human rights, use these international organizations for their purposes, including Those that are counted are supposed to be independent justice bodies, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), also known as the International Criminal Court (ICC). Do not confuse the ICC with the so-called International Court of Justice, which depends on the United Nations and which resolves legal disputes between States. The ICC is the only international court with the power to investigate and prosecute people accused of the most serious crimes against the international community.
Indeed, the ICC is an entity whose fundamental objective is to judge anyone accused of committing war crimes, aggression, recognized as crimes against humanity. In this definition framework, Crimes against Humanity are all attacks against fundamental human rights. That is, not only against specific, concrete victims, but against humanity as a whole. To refer to these crimes is to talk about murders, extermination, slavery, deportation or the forced transfer of population. As well as the serious deprivation of liberty or torture, which is committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population (1) and whose most concrete example we have seen in the last six and a half months with the extermination process carried out carried out by the Israeli national-Zionist regime against Palestine, in a continuation of a process that has already lasted 76 years in a clear and evident policy of final solution of the “Palestinian question” in the style of the Wannsee conference held by the Nazi hierarchs in April 1942 to carry out the mass execution of millions of human beings, including Europeans of Jewish belief, prisoners of war, people with mental disabilities, gypsies, among others.
The extermination policy carried out by the Israeli entity is a conduct that violates every law that exists to defend human rights, to stop aggression and the occupation of a territory. A worldview that governs their acts of crimes, in which despite the obvious violations of the final solution policy implemented against the Palestinian people, the Israeli national-Zionist entity has not only failed to comply with any of the resolutions of the UN regarding returning the occupied territories, stopping the construction of illegal settlements with settlers of the most extremist Zionists, demolishing the apartheid wall created in the West Bank, allowing the return of Palestinian refugees, but also those determinations to end the aggression implemented since October 2023 and which has meant, so far, 35 thousand murders – among them 15 thousand children – 90 thousand injuries and the destruction of 75% of the buildings, houses, schools, production centers, crops, hospitals and carts of the Gaza Strip. This reality led South Africa to present war crimes charges against Netanyahu and his regime before the International Criminal Court. Until now? nothing that smacks of determinations, that involve arresting the Zionist prime minister or advancing the creation of an International Criminal Court, to judge him and his people.
We have also seen the above in other parts of the world, since 2014 when the far-right regime in kyiv began a process of extermination against the population of Donbas, starting with the coup d'état of February 2014 that overthrew the government of Victor Yanukovych and that until February 2022, when the military operation of denazification and demilitarization of the Kiev regime at the hands of the army of the Russian Federation begins, had meant the murder of at least 20 thousand Russian-speaking inhabitants of the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, today brand new popular republics severed from any ties with kyiv. This is not usually remembered when demonizing the defense operation of that Russian population in the eastern wing of Ukraine, which has a clear and undeniable relationship with Russia.
The International Criminal Court was born on July 17, 1998, under the so-called Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries of the United Nations, which discussed the need to establish an International Criminal Court. The court began operating in 2002 and succeeded ad hoc tribunals formed in the 1990s to address atrocity crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. At the aforementioned meeting, 120 States belonging to the UN approved the so-called Rome Statute (2). There were also seven votes against and 21 abstentions, allowing the implementation of that CPI, which would come into force on July 1, 2002 – a vote that was not recorded in the minutes – therefore, it was not known who voted in favor or against. or abstained except for the People's Republic of China, the United States and Israel.
These three countries expressed their reasons for voting against. In the case of the Israeli regime, it indicated that it was voting against because it did not understand why “the act of transferring inhabitants to an occupied territory was included in the list of war crimes” – clearly to avoid complying with international resolutions that prevented the continuation of the policy of occupation, colonization and extermination of the Palestinian population and its territories. This, included within the prohibitions included in the IV Geneva Convention - China indicated that its vote against was for preferring a decision by consensus that by majority and the United States, for its part, affirmed that the Statute should recognize the role of the Security Council in determining an act of aggression – because there, undoubtedly, Washington has the right to an indisputable veto and has served to refuse multiple accusations against its own administrations, such as those that signify its satellite countries.
In an interesting document titled “Ten convictions in 25 years: Does the International Criminal Court fulfill its purpose? (3) It is noted that “The first person the ICC successfully tried was Thomas Lubanga Dylio, former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In March 2012, Dylio was found guilty of war crimes of enlisting and recruiting children under the age of 15 and using them to actively participate in hostilities. Since then, the ICC has initiated 30 more cases, 10 of which have resulted in convictions and four in acquittals, while 16 suspects remain at large. The ICC has 18 judges selected by the Assembly of States Parties for non-renewable nine-year terms and has an annual budget of approximately 200 million euros. On the 25th anniversary of the creation of the ICC, it was declared that “today the world needs justice more than ever. The atrocities of the 20th century that led to the creation of the Court have not ceased to exist and we are witnessing an increasing erosion of multilateralism and the rule of law.” The problem is that the ICC overwhelmingly judges what is determined by Washington and its people.
In March 2023, the ICC, due to pressure from the United States and NATO countries, issued an arrest warrant against the Russian president, “for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children and their transfer from the occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” ”. The same order was issued against Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Russian presidential commissioner for children's rights. A baseless accusation beyond the complaints of the Kiev regime, amplified by the Western media. What does Washington and its people intend with this new provocative measure against Russia and especially against its top leader and government officials? First, use an international organization and thereby give an appearance of legal seriousness to the accusation against Putin. This, in the context of the current war confrontation in Ukraine, where the participants escape to Russia and Ukraine, when behind Kiev's forces is NATO, which uses Ukraine as a spearhead and cannon fodder.
In my opinion and despite the enormous media, political and diplomatic campaign carried out by the pro-North American West, there is no plausible foundation, no cause that we can define as serious, truthful, beyond a narrative known for the enormous campaign of manipulation and disinformation, which has been woven against Russia since the end of the former USSR and intensified after the Russian decision to carry out the military operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine, which has become the spearhead of Washington's Russophobic policies and to which European countries, grouped in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty organization – NATO – join in with irresponsible enthusiasm. This type of determination has the clear intention of isolating Russia, generating a policy of maximum pressure, which then envisions a unilateral, unreliable ICC subject to the interests of Western countries. This, to the detriment not only of rivals from the West, but also of the global south as a whole.
In this way, international law, security and peace are undermined. The measures taken so far by the ICC are totally unilateral and we have not seen them implemented when it comes to Western leaders, among them – in the case of the invasion of Iraq due to manipulated information – the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the former Spanish President José MarÃa Aznar, former US president George W. Bush, responsible for the murder of a million Iraqis. Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself and much of his cabinet. NATO generals, generals of the invading armies generating millions of murders in Western Sahara, Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, among others where those responsible are Western governments with the participation of regimes such as Australia, Canada, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, among others.
In an article published in www. Segundopaso.es (4) I pointed out more than a year ago - and it has not changed one bit - that the ICC is an organization at the service of the West, of the hegemonic interests of Washington and its own, an instrument to try to continue with a world that cries out for changes. An organization that has dedicated itself to issuing arrest warrants for African leaders, but none against those Western political and military leaders who are responsible for aggressions, invasions, occupation and colonization of territories. Responsible for the death, for example, of 600 thousand human beings in Syria in a war of aggression carried out by foreign troops and terrorist groups from 2011 to date. A West that has endorsed the crimes committed by the Ukrainian government since February 2014 to date against the Russian-speaking population of Donbas.
An ICC that neither judges nor has issued any condemnation of the Zionist civil-military regime for 76 years of occupation and colonization, which has resulted – due to estimates far below the real number of murders – in the death of at least 150 thousand Palestinians. in the last 76 years, to which we must add the 35 thousand only in these last 195 days. The forced deportation of its inhabitants, the detention, torture, murder, kidnappings, among other war crimes and crimes against humanity where we have not seen that this ICC has issued an arrest warrant against the criminals Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Liberman, Benny Gantz, Ayelet Shaked, Itamar Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich or the Israeli war minister Yoav Gallant, among thousands of other Israeli criminals. "What credibility can the ICC have if they have remained silent about the suffering of the Iraqi people after 20 years of aggression by the United States and Great Britain, or the Afghan people?
An ICC that remained silent when the United States imposed sanctions against an ICC prosecutor for her investigation of war crimes committed in Afghanistan by the US military. Washington also threatened to arrest and discipline justices and other court officials over the same case. On September 2, 2020, the administration announced that the United States had imposed sanctions against ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division of the Office of the Prosecutor, Phakiso Mochochok. This action specified an executive order issued on June 11, 2020 by President Donald Trump, which declared a surreal national emergency and authorized asset freezes and family entry bans that could be imposed against certain ICC officials (5).
Former US President Trump at the time called the ICC "irresponsible" and "dangerous" for the country, in addition to urging "limiting the broad powers" of the ICC. In 2024, current US President Joe Biden supports the court's decision against Vladimir Putin. Washington, at the time, adopted a law that authorizes the use of "all necessary and appropriate means to achieve the release" of a soldier or official detained at the request of the court in The Hague. Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton under the Trump administration stated in 2018: "We will allow the ICC to die on its own. At the end of the day, the ICC is dead in every sense" (6 ). Upon confession, release of evidence. The ICC and its unilateral conduct, in favor of the West, "is on the path to self-destruction."
I fully agree with the words of the Russian ambassador to the UN Security Council when maintaining that this institution called the ICC, at a time when it was silent in the face of the crimes of kyiv, the United States and NATO in the Donbas, as well as its own silence with in relation to crimes committed for decades by the West that, the ICC is an unbalanced and incompetent politicized institution, has once again demonstrated its inferiority. “The ICC is a puppet in the hands of the collective West that is always ready to carry out pseudo-justice on request" (7). It is evident that the world is marching inexorably towards multilateralism and the dying empire can do nothing more than slap its hands like a drowning man.
1. https://www.hrw.org/es/topic/international-justice/corte-penal-internacional
2. https://www.un.org/spanish/law/icc/statute/spanish/rome_statute(s).pdf
3. https://dobetter.esade.edu/es/25-a%C3%B1os-corte-penal-internacional-proposito
4. https:// Segundopaso.es/tag/corte-penal-internacional/
5. The Trump administration's unprecedented imposition of asset freezes on senior officials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) reveals a blatant disregard for victims of the world's worst crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. On September 2, 2020, the administration announced that the United States had imposed sanctions against ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division of the Office of the Prosecutor, Phakiso Mochochoko.
https://www.hrw.org/es/news/2020/09/08/estados-unidos-sanciona-la-fiscal-de-la-corte-penal-internacional#:~:text=El%202%20de %20September%20de,Office%20del%20Prosecutor%2C%20Phakiso%20Mochochoko
6. https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/461206-rusia-corte-penal-internacional-camino-autodestruccion
7. https://es.irna.ir/news/85060498/Russia's-response-to-the-CPI-order-against-Putin
Article published in SegundoPaso ConoSur
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” -Voltaire1
“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.” ― John Lennon, Imagine
