The world must act
IN the past, there was a joke in the UN corridors: a person who deliberately kills another gets either life imprisonment or death sentence; a person who kills twenty is sent to mental hospital, but a person who kills tens of thousands of people goes to Geneva for peace talks.
The international community looked the other way, or tried to appease the perpetrators of international crimes with promises of immunity. However, ugly occurrences did not end. During the 20th century, 160 million human lives were lost through war, genocide and torture, according to a statistics by eminent British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson.
The international community was pricked by conscience for not being able to do anything against the commission of crimes against humanity. One of the remedies is the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC).
The establishment of an ICC has been on the drawing board since the 1970s and, in 1974, an international conference on the subject was held in Dhaka. Jurists from various countries participated in the conference and recommended the setting up of a permanent ICC. In that sense, Bangladesh has been one of the pioneering states in the creation of an ICC and can take due credit for it.
The recommendation was made in the background of heinous international crimes committed in Bangladesh during the Liberation War of 1971, as reflected in Kolkata Barrister Subrata Roy Chowdhury's book The Genesis of Bangladesh: A Study in International Legal Norms and Permissive Conscience (1972).
In 1998 more than 100 states including Bangladesh overwhelmingly adopted the Rome Statute, creating the ICC.
With the establishment of an International Criminal Court in July 2002, the fate of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes has dramatically changed. In 2003, 18 judges were appointed to the Court by state-parties, and the ICC has been functioning from The Hague (Netherlands) since then.
The drafters of the Statute took into account, among others, the Khmer Rouge "killing fields" (1975-79), Rwandan genocide (1994) and Srebrenica killings of Muslims Bosnians (1995).
The instances below demonstrate that no one, not even a head of state, is immune from facing criminal trial for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes.
For example, on a request from Spain, late Chilean President Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 for crimes against humanity, and he was released only on medical grounds. Yugoslavia's late dictator Slobodan Milosevic was surrendered by the Serbian government and put on trial at the Ad-hoc International Criminal Court in 2002 on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Bosnian conflict, until his death in custody.
In 2005, Britain and France spearheaded the Security Council decision to refer Darfur's case to the ICC. A warrant was issued in March to arrest the sitting president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, for commission of crimes against humanity. As of today, ICC has issued 13 arrest warrants and one summons.
The influence of ICC is felt beyond the courtroom. Armies around the world, even of non-signatory states, are adjusting their standards and rules of engagement to the Rome Statute. The Statute has made the difference between a soldier or a policeman or a criminal or a terrorist.
The Central African Republic and Ivory Coast asked for ICC's intervention. A month ago, the Arab League sent its first ever fact-finding report on crimes committed by Israelis in Gaza. Congo executed arrest warrants against three militia leaders for enlisting child soldiers.
Crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide are the gravest crimes in international law and are condemned by all UN members. Effective punishment is an important element in the prevention and recurrence of such odious crimes and for protection of the inherent dignity of a human being.
More than 28 years after the killing stopped, Khmer Rouge leaders are being tried before the UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia.
On December 3, 1973, a resolution of the General Assembly (Resolution number 3074) was adopted, underscoring the obligations of member-states of the UN in the detention, arrest, extradition and punishment of perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On January 29, 2009, the Bangladesh Parliament adopted a resolution to try war criminals. On March 25, the government decided to try war criminals under the 1973 International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, and the process has already began in the law ministry.
Ratifications to the Rome Statute are growing. The Palestinian Authority accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC. In June this year, Chile became the 109th state party to join.
To demonstrate the commitment to trial of war crimes, it is appropriate that Bangladesh should ratify the Statute of International Criminal Court of 1998, which will show to the international community Bangladesh's firm resolve that war crimes must not and cannot escape punishment through a due process of a trial.
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