Editor, RE: “DR Congo’s Bemba sentenced to 18 years for war crimes in CAR” (The New Times, June 21). The International Criminal Court is an unfair institution. They will always focus and zoom in on non-western personalities believed (rightly or wrongly, and that’s a whole other debate all together) to have perpetrated violent acts, but never will we hear or see that court publicly indict western leaders who have committed crimes against humanity, etc. Bemba most likely deserves what he got but show us that justice is as blind as the West claims it is. Ali Baba ********************************** Editor, To Ali Baba, justice has never in fact been blind, nor can it ever be given that human biases of those dispensing it will always colour outcomes. Those who claim it is will also push the laughable notion of media independence, objectivity, and neutrality; fantasies for the incurably naive. By the way, weren’t Bemba’s troops fighting under the direction of the then Central Africa Republic President Ange Felix Patasse? How come he has never been brought to book, or at least brought to the ICC to testify? Or, is Bemba’s real crime, for which he has been under detention all these years, and has now been railroaded really about protecting their Man in Kinshasa from Detainee Bemba’s efforts to undercut his ability to strike deals with their own natural resources exploitation companies? Anyone who has been attentive about the ICC’s actions will have noticed that anyone who could really threaten (DR Congo President Joseph) Kabila’s hold on power has always somehow found himself in the gun sights of the ICC and its western masters. Not that I particularly care for Bemba, but there is something particularly nauseating about all these judicial lynching masquerading as justice. Mwene Kalinda
