Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There is little doubt in my mind or I think in most people's minds that Russia has committed and is committing war crimes in Ukraine. Any efforts to hold them to account, to bring out the truth of those war crimes, to prosecute them and to deliver justice to the people who are victims of those crimes should be pursued. We absolutely must do that. However, I have little faith in the International Criminal Court. I say this because previously, in most cases in which it has been charged to look at these things in other similar instances, it has failed pretty dramatically. I do not see why we would trust it to do this.

It is also interesting to look at who has signed up to the ICC and who has not. The United States has not subscribed to the International Criminal Court because it does not want to be held accountable for its war crimes. At one point, I believe it signed it but then it withdrew its signature and it never ratified it. Israel did the same in order that it cannot be investigated. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates refused to sign it. Russia and Ukraine signed it but never ratified it. That is interesting. Many countries, including two of the countries that are directly involved in this, never wanted to ratify the International Criminal Court. There is a problem, is there not, if we are serious about this?

The whole point about war crimes and crimes against humanity is that they include any war crime. They are not just war crimes that occur in a particular place at a particular time and that we decide we are going to investigate. The whole idea is that a war crime is a war crime, no matter where it is committed. As for a crime against humanity, the clue is in the name; it is a crime against any member of humanity that falls within the definition of a crime against humanity. It seems we now have great enthusiasm, all of a sudden, to pursue the war crimes and crimes against humanity that are undoubtedly being committed by Vladimir Putin in his bloody and inexcusable war. Yet, many of the people who denounce the crimes against humanity and the war crimes do not themselves want to be subject to this court. They have avoided doing it because they might themselves be found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Is anybody going to call out this hypocrisy?

If it is to be selective in this regard, I do not see what credibility the International Criminal Court has. If Putin’s war against Ukraine is a war crime and a crime against humanity, then the US-UK War in Iraq definitely is a crime against humanity. It was a war based on a pack of lies, with a million people being directly and indirectly killed. There was the horror of Fallujah, to name just one terrible example. There was the torture in Abu Ghraib. What did the ICC do? It had a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes that may have been committed. They could not investigate the US because, as I said, the US has not signed up to it. The preliminary investigation into the UK was closed down in 2006 with no prosecution. Some new evidence was provided later. They had a look at that and then they closed it down in 2020.

Israel has just been indicted by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a UN special rapporteur on the Middle East for committing war crimes, which come under the ambit of the International Criminal Court, as matters it should pursue. Where are the announcements that this will happen? There are none. There is no announcement about the fact that they are being accused by the UN special rapporteur and two of the most respected human rights organisations in the world of ongoing, 70-years-long crimes against humanity. As for the siege of Gaza, there has been no investigation. There has been no clamour for the prosecution of the war crimes. Therefore, I do not place much credibility in this.

If we are serious about stopping war crimes and crimes against humanity, we have to be calling them all out. We have to be demanding investigations into all of them and not just the ones where it happens to suit the geopolitical or geostrategic interests of the European Union, this or that power, the United States or whoever else. We have to call out those countries that do not wish to be held accountable for crimes against humanity, which include many of Europe’s allies.

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