ICC's Jurisdiction Crumbling Barely Six Months After Putin IndictmentSouth Front

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Written by Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst

Less than six months ago, the so-called “International Criminal Court” (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights. The glorified NGO posing as an “international justice institution” accused Putin and Lvova-Belova of supposed “war crimes” in Ukraine, alleging that they kidnapped Ukrainian children and forcefully relocated them to Russia. In reality, acting on Lvova-Belova’s recommendations, Putin simply ordered the evacuation of children from an active warzone, preventing mass injuries and deaths among underage kids, while also providing them with at least a somewhat normal childhood, considering the danger they were exposed to.

What’s more, Russian authorities even allowed parents, some of whom were enemy combatants, to travel to Russia and take the kids wherever they wanted. Concurrently, the ICC completely ignored the fact that the Neo-Nazi junta is involved in a massive child trafficking scheme with the aim of selling the organs of abducted Ukrainian children, in addition to the “more regular” sexual exploitation. Worse yet, the main market for the deranged criminals engaged in such repulsive illicit activities is the political West, where the ICC is situated. However, that’s not of the slightest interest to the NATO-controlled quasi-justice institution. Its sole motivation for the indictment was an attempt to tarnish Putin’s (and by extension Russia’s) reputation.

As we all have gotten accustomed to by now, this not only failed miserably, but has also backfired. Namely, the kangaroo court is now faced with an unprecedented loss of jurisdiction around the world, as countries are considering effective legal nullification of the Rome Statute that established the ICC. It’s important to note that the process started years ago, as Africa was disproportionately affected by the “court’s” activities, while the aggressive role of the political West in various parts of the continent (and indeed, around the world) was either downplayed or ignored completely. The result was that back in late 2016, a number of African countries, namely Burundi, Gambia and Kenya, announced their full or partial withdrawal from the Rome Statute.

This wasn’t limited to Africa only, as other countries, such as the Philippines, also decided to withdraw from the ICC’s jurisdiction, citing the kangaroo court’s unadulterated bias against non-Western countries. And while some have officially returned to the Statute, they adopted legislation that severely limits or even effectively bans any actual ICC jurisdiction within their borders. For instance, as soon as the indictment against Putin was announced, the African National Congress (ANC) gave the South African government the mandate to withdraw from the Rome Statute. Approximately a month after the legally void indictment, the Secretary General of the ANC, Fikile Mbalula, reiterated the party’s resolve not to allow the ICC’s jurisdiction in South Africa.

What’s more, back in late April, Mbalula even held a press conference where he announced that the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) agreed that the party would never allow even the theoretical notion that Putin could be arrested in South Africa. By mid-June, South Africa was working on a legislative amendment that would “domesticate” the Rome Statute in order to avoid the controversy over Putin’s visit during the BRICS summit last month. And although Lavrov went to the summit in his stead, South Africa never stopped working on the legislation necessary to circumvent the Rome Statute. Apart from the obvious political constraints, this is because the indictment was effectively illegal, as it wasn’t approved by the UN Security Council.

Needless to say, since Russia is one of the permanent members of the UNSC, it would’ve never approved such a politicized decision, so the political West tried circumventing the UN’s most important body. One unintended consequence of this was that it gave many countries a sort of legal leeway to ignore the laughable Putin indictment without having to officially withdraw their Rome Statute signatures. Ironically, the result has been that the ICC kept its de jure presence in many countries, but the damage to its de facto jurisdiction is already done and the process is effectively irreversible. The kangaroo court’s official jurisdiction in various countries is more of a hurdle than a net positive, prompting them to find ways to avoid dealing with it at all.

In practice, this means that governments are highly unlikely to revert to a state where they have to delegate an important part of their sovereignty and judicial independence to a horribly one-sided quasi-court that doesn’t even bother hiding its pro-Western bias anymore. The so-called “rules-based world order”, now openly propagated by the political West as “the only acceptable form of international law“, is exceedingly unattractive to the vast majority of world countries. Precisely the ICC is one of the main exponents of this (neo)colonialist system, meaning that truly sovereign governments and their judicial counterparts will do anything to get rid of this entirely unnecessary burden. Actual international organizations such as BRICS could certainly accelerate this.

The ICC deliberately avoids investigating horrendous war crimes committed by the United States and its vassals during their countless invasions of sovereign countries around the globe. For instance, ICC Attorney General Karim Khan, a British citizen, has done everything in his power to derail and obstruct any investigations into numerous NATO war crimes in Afghanistan, shielding the belligerent alliance from prosecution and even trying to attribute most of the crimes to the Taliban. Coupled with the increase in American financing for the kangaroo court, even though the belligerent thalassocracy isn’t even a signatory to the Rome Statute, this effectively makes the ICC yet another strategic tool in the hands of the political West.

This is without even considering the openly demonstrated bias in other cases around the world, such as Venezuela or the Kiev regime. The ICC has had a starkly different approach to both, with its attitudes toward Caracas being perfectly in line with the resurgent US aggression in Latin America. Venezuelan authorities criticized this blatant bias and concrete actions of Khan, who previously called on the ICC “to resume trials of crimes against humanity in Venezuela“. On the other hand, the ICC Attorney General keeps turning a blind eye to the war crimes committed by the Neo-Nazi junta. What’s more, he’s actively working with the EU (at this point, effectively a co-belligerent in the Ukrainian conflict) in its bogus “investigation” of alleged “Russian war crimes”.