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Willing to listen not frightened to speak.

Tuesday 31 May 2011

War crimes and military gangsters


The world waited sixteen years for the Bosnian Serb General and military gangster  Ratko Mladic to be arrested. Without doubt the Serb authorities knew of his whereabouts for years but chose to remain silent and to some degree excused his genocidal massacres of Muslims.
But at least he was captured alive and will eventually be tried at the Hague.
Pakistan was accused of withholding knowledge of Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts but once found he was not given the benefit of a trial but was extrajudicialy  killed. The rule of law was not seen to have taken place. A dangerous precedent.
Both were responsible for murder and death on a great scale and their respective trial or assassination will not bring back the thousands who died or were maimed or whose presence on earth was denied.
Yet there are others who have killed more and hide behind their offices or uniforms that still have not been brought to justice.The International Criminal Court awaits them all.
In the west Tony Blair and George W Bush spring to mind.
In the Middle East Hosni Mubarak might escape the Hague tribunal by his failing health. King Hamad ibn Issa Al Khalifa of Bahrain and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia by Saudi intervention. Ali Saleh Abdullah by an amnesty deal and Gaddafi most probably by a NATO bomb unless Jacob Zuma is able to negotiate an exit-exile strategy for him and his family. Omar Al Bashir of Sudan for the moment will escape due to Qatari intervention. However we have sen how fickle friends can be when you are no longer of use to them so no doubt those that survive old age or the assassins bullet may yet see the inside of  a courtroom.
Then we come to Palestine and the Goldstone report. Has the International community become so corrupt that it chose to ignore these war crimes just because Israel was involved?  Is this report now relegated to wipe our collective bottoms with? Has our humanity reached such depths of depravity that we allow the Children of Palestine to be ignored,or for that matter the Children of Syria to be continued to be massacred, some being tortured and flayed like young Hamza Al Khatteeb?
No doubt the universe has a way of correcting itself and Bashar Al Asaad and his bloodthirsty regime will be brought to task. Meanwhile his Uncle Rifaat is still swagging around the five star hotels of Europe casually boasting to those that care to listen about his role in the massacres in  Hama, Syria which claimed thirty eight thousand lives. Where is the ICC now?
A one rule approach is the only way to insure that these military gangsters know that the days of ethnic cleansing, genocide torture and repression are over.The carnage they have collectively wrought means they have to be brought to justice even when their expected conviction will not bring back the hundreds of thousands hurt, maimed, or killed in the slaughters there will be an emotional rejoicing in the knowledge that we are a people of laws.
Laws are what separate us from beasts let us not forget that. 

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