DR Congo massacre may alter international law

[undeterred]

Case to be decided on March 7 could represent a breakthrough for justice related to sexual crimes during war.
Benjamin Durr Last updated: 15 Feb 2014 13:43

It was half past five on a Monday morning in February 2003 when the first men arrived. They ran to the centre of the village carrying machetes and spears and rifles. Some invaded the houses and shot residents in their sleep, others cut them up with their machetes; another group set the huts on fire and burnt the families alive. As time went by, the commanders of the group put some chairs under the mango trees close to the village and began to drink beer. By the end of the afternoon, dead bodies of around 200 people were scattered on the ground; and the commanders were drunk.

This is how the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) describes the attack on Bogoro, a village in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to the prosecutor's team of investigators and lawyers, the attack is only one of many events that make the conflict in Central Africa one of the bloodiest since World War II. For almost ten years the ICC team has been building a case against the alleged perpetrators of this particular attack. Now the final stage has been reached. On March 7 the judges at the Netherlands-based court will deliver their ruling in the case against Germain Katanga, allegedly a leader of one of the groups that committed the attack on Bogoro.

Ethnic cleansing?
Katanga has been charged with three counts of crimes against humanity, namely murder, sexual slavery, and rape; as well as seven counts of war crimes, among them the use of child soldiers, attacks on the civilian population, and pillaging. The ICC is the first permanent international court that has jurisdiction over grave human rights violations. According to the prosecution, the accused Germain Katanga was the commander of the Patriotic Resistance Force in Ituri (FRPI), a militia in Eastern Congo. FRPI fighters were mainly members of the Lendu and Ngiti ethnic groups and wanted to "wipe out" Bogoro village and its predominantly Hema population, the prosecution stated. The FRPI militia allegedly committed the attack on Bogoro jointly with another rebel group led by Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. Their leaders, Katanga and Ngudjolo, were facing similar charges, and their trial began in November 2009. In 2012, Ngudjolo was acquitted for lack of evidence. The judges argued that witness testimony had been too contradictory. "The acquittal highlighted the fundamental weakness of the evidence gathered by the prosecution," Phil Clark, a political scientist at the University of London who is specialises in the region, told Al Jazeera. Since both cases use the same batch of evidence, a conviction of Germain Katanga is far from guaranteed, Clark adds.

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"The important role of other regional governments is a key issue which has been skirted for fear of losing the ICC's political allies in the region." ... If not politically, the judgment could be pathbreaking legally though: A conviction for sexual crimes would be considered a major victory for the evolving nature of international law. According to experts, the judgment can shape how the international community in the future will deal with sexual violence crimes in conflicts.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/02/dr-congo-massacre-may-alter-international-law-2014215122427499229.html

Something must be done to stop the crime of sexual violence from being practiced with impunity in war.

[dipsydoodle]

1. But not as far as the US is concerned

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

On 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7, with 21 countries abstaining.[10] Because the way each delegation voted was officially unrecorded, there is some dispute over the identity of the seven countries that voted against the treaty.[11] It is certain that the People's Republic of China, Israel, and the United States were three of the seven because they have publicly confirmed their negative votes; India, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen have been identified by various observers and commentators as possible sources for the other four negative votes, with Iraq, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen being the four most commonly identified.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court

[undeterred]

2. So far, the International Criminal Court has prosecuted only African countries

Presumably if these countries had stronger legal systems the ICC might have a different focus.