In the past few years, a myriad of cases have been brought by international courts against susceptible international human rights abusers.The cases were lodged either in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) against perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, and its sister tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as the special court set up to try ringleaders of the leaders in the famous “killing fields” under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.The other was that of Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, regarding his alleged role in helping Sierra Leone rebels in their well publicized atrocities,(some of the convicts are now serving their sentences in Rwanda after other countries became averse to harbouring them.The others are Congolese warlords; Thomas Lubanga and Jean Pierre Bemba, convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal (ICC) under the auspices of the Rome Statute.All these have one thing in common: all suspects, including those from Yugoslavia, are all victims of the international community’s guilty conscience of not stopping the atrocities or, in a more direct manner, having no strategic reason to do so, and instead resort to giving a semblance to justice by setting up all these exorbitant tribunals.These countries are not the only ones that experienced, or have fingers pointed in their directions; without seeming to justify the former’s actions, other more powerful ones are committing even worse crimes, but they walk off Scott free.If the International community really wants to give credence to its “international justice” rhetoric, it should shift its attention beyond the ‘poor African” and failed states arena and do its own soul searching.There should be no sacred cows.
