African exodus continues as Gambia announces ICC exit

The court showed its “true colors” by refusing to prosecute former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for war crimes in Iraq, a Gambian top official said in a televised statement.

Gambia’s pledge to leave the Hague-based court on Tuesday comes in the wake of similar announcements. Kenya is also considering their withdrawal.

Africa’s powerhouse South Africa announced on last week that it would withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the United Nations has confirmed receipt of the withdrawal notice on the same day.

South Africa said last week that it had formally begun the process of withdrawing from the ICC because it did not want to execute arrest warrants which would lead to “regime change”. Last year the government refused to arrest Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the court.

The move by South Africa came in the same week that Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza signed a decree into law taking his country out of the ICC.

According to Gambia’s Information Minister, the decision was informed by the International Criminal Court (ICC) ignoring war crimes committed by Western countries.

The minister denounced the institution as “an International Caucasian Court for the persecution and humiliation of people of color, especially Africans.”

“There are many Western countries, at least 30, that have committed heinous war crimes against independent sovereign states and their citizens since the creation of the ICC, and not a single Western war criminal has been indicted,” he added.

Since the establishment of the ICC in 2002, the court conducted ten investigations. Nine of them were over crimes on African soil and the remaining case was tied to offenses in Georgia.

Only Africans have been charged in the six ICC cases that are ongoing or set to begin, AP confirmed.

During the Tuesday statement, the information minister said that the country had tried to get the ICC to react to “genocide” over migrants trying to reach Europe. A disproportionately large number of them are citizens of Gambia, fleeing the troubled country with a population under two million.

“Thousands of young Africans in search of greener pastures have been dying on European coasts on weekly basis,” the official stated. “For what crime – because they are black? We depend on almighty Allah and Allah-willing all the racist, genocidal criminals responsible for the continuing mass slaughter of Africans will face justice,” he added.

The BBC reported that the country has been unsuccessfully trying to have the European Union indicted by the court over the deaths of thousands of African migrants trying to reach the continent by boat.

Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda is the ICC’s current chief prosecutor.

Over the weekend, AlJazeera reported that the ICC had asked South Africa and Burundi to reconsider their decisions, which came as a major blow to the institution.

“I urge them to work together with other states in the fight against impunity, which often causes massive violations of human rights,” Sidiki Kaba, president of the assembly of state parties to the ICC founding treaty, said in a statement issued by the court.

Set up in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 2002, the ICC is tasked with “prosecuting the most serious crimes that shock the conscience of humanity, namely genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression.”

It has, however, faced numerous accusations of bias against Africa and struggled with a lack of cooperation from countries including the US and China, which have signed the court’s treaty but never ratified it.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former ICC chief prosecutor, criticised Burundi and South Africa, accusing them of giving leaders on the continent a free hand “to commit genocide”.

“Burundi is leaving the ICC to keep committing crimes against humanity and possible genocide in its territory. Burundi’s president wants free hands to attack civilians,” he told AlJazeera.

He said Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, had “promoted the establishment of the Court to avoid new massive crimes in Africa.

“The chaos is coming. Genocide in Burundi and a new African war are in motion.”