EDITORIAL: Letters on the Hague trials sent in bad faith

Posted Thursday, March 10 2011 at 19:28

The government, or a faction within it, is trying to have the International Criminal Court process on Kenya suspended with the argument that it could destabilise the country.

Letters sent to the UN Secretary-General, the President of the UN Security Council and the President of the Assembly of State Parties to the ICC warn that the Court action will result in a return to the climate of violence it is meant to cure.

The Hague this week issued summonses to six individuals its prosecutor has already publicly identified as key suspects in the violence.

The ICC only came in as a last resort after the government, and Parliament, on several occasions failed to establish a local mechanism.

Belated efforts to convince the world that Kenya is reforming the judicial and security branches to pave the way for the establishment of a credible and independent local tribunal did not impress anyone.

Persisting with political pressure outside the ICC courtrooms is an exercise in futility. And the arguments being advanced can only backfire because they can be interpreted as threats.

The letters posit that ICC trials present a “real and present danger” to the maintenance of peace and security.

They warn of the “potential risk to ignite violence, breakdown of law and order and result in loss of human life” and go ahead to extend the risk to “disruption of economic peace and security activities in the fragile and volatile sub-region”.

It is true that the threat of punishment against the key suspects of the post-election butchery comes with inherent risks in a polarised society where people have perfected the art of seeking protection from their ethnic communities whenever they are mentioned in adverse circumstances.

This is the impunity that must be tackled. If we have not demonstrated the will to act domestically, we automatically invite international intervention.

Chilling message

What is most chilling about the message, however, is that it recalls our history self-fulfilling prophecies.

Back at the beginning of the campaign against dictatorship in 1990, the regime of then President Moi issued strident warnings that a multiparty system would only lead to ethnic warfare.

Kanu politicians went around the countryside issuing blood-curdling threats. Soon enough, large swathes of the country were caught up in violence that took on the characteristics of ethnic cleansing.

The so-called ethnic clashes spawned then were not spontaneous outbreaks but carefully plotted State-sponsored responses aimed at retaining a dictatorial one-party kleptocracy.

The bloodshed leading up to the historic 1992 multiparty elections came to be replicated at most subsequent polls as a desperate regime sought to hold on to power. It was finally swept away in 2002.

However, the mentality that thrived in the dictatorship and spawned the periodic resort to ethnic jingoism and violence did not disappear. It rebounded strongly in 2007, with calamitous results.

It has now insulated itself firmly with sections of the present leadership. That is the only conclusion one can draw from the warnings of violence if the suspects are not spared. That is the culture of impunity, and it must be firmly resisted.