Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-24-Speech-4-152"
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"en.20021024.8.4-152"2
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"Mr President, the United States’ refusal to ratify the International Criminal Court is indicative of its pride, but also of the ridiculous, hypocritical nature of the Court. It is supposed to give substance to the concept of international, immanent justice which can punish, if not prevent, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Even with one International Criminal Court conducting an investigation into a few crooks who bear a large part of the responsibility for the massacres in the former Yugoslavia and another conducting an investigation into the genocide in Rwanda, however, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that all those guilty of offences which are just as serious will be prosecuted. How likely is it that the politicians and economic profiteers of the former colonial Belgian power, who consciously set the Tutsis and the Hutus against each other, will be prosecuted? Will the French leaders be prosecuted, those leaders whose troops in Rwanda were present, holding their fire at the massacres unleashed by the government in office, when they did not make matters worse by supplying weapons to either side?
Will the United Kingdom be prosecuted for its part in the political manœuvres which played such a major role in the ethnic massacres in Sierra Leone? How likely is it that George Bush, who is preparing, openly and publicly, to bombard tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians with the excuse that he is punishing their dictator, will be prosecuted before the Court for crimes against humanity? How likely is it that the industrial groups which, thanks to the gung-ho activities of politicians, are free to derive considerable profits from the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, will be prosecuted?
Well then, the only effect of the International Criminal Court will be to add a touch of hypocrisy to an imperialist world where the strongest have the last word."@en1
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