Gen. Museveni — reportedly asked Kofi Annan to block ICC investigation into alleged crimes by Uganda’s army in Congo. At the time Luis Moreno Ocampo was ICC chief Prosecutor
[U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit: Activists Oppose Dictators]
This is an excerpt from my comments at the July 31 press conference at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C., by activists opposed to the presence of some notorious dictators including Gen. Yoweri Museveni and Gen. Paul Kagame at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
The press conference was moderated by Shaka Ssali, host and producer of Voice of America’s “Straight Talk Africa.” What follows is my response to Ssali’s question as to why I considered Gen. Museveni and Gen. Kagame to be unindicted war criminals even though they had been once dubbed “new breed” African leaders by President Bill Clinton, who incidentally today is a major apologist for Kagame.
Response to Shaka Ssali’s question: I think my problem is, people can say anything, and when they are not challenged it becomes sort of a false truth.
It’s much more realistic actually to say that General Museveni and Paul Kagame are unindicted war criminals.
And these are not just my words.
This is based on the actions that they have taken and what has been investigated and the facts that have been put together.
So let’s look at when Claude [Gatebuke, 1994 genocide survivor] mentioned the figure of six million. He was actually referring to the Congo I believe.
That’s the estimate of people that have been killed in the Congo based on the wars, the displacement of people, the diseases that have occurred as a result of the multiple invasions of Congo by the armies of Uganda and Rwanda under General Museveni and Kagame respectively.
And this was investigated and well documented, exhaustively, and in the case of Uganda, and this is one thing that might come as news to some people in media when in fact it should not be, Uganda was actually found liable of war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the International Court of Justice. This is rarely mentioned in any of the corporate media.
This was serious. Evidence was heard, the Congo took the matter to the Court, Uganda brought its lawyers, the evidence was heard and a ruling was made by the International Court of Justice that Uganda was indeed liable for war crimes. Atrocities, rapes, mass rapes, massacres, plunder of resources.Uganda was ordered to pay to Congo reparations of six billion to ten billion dollars in 2005 and not a dime has been paid.
But then what did the Congo do? The Congo referred the same matter to the International Criminal Court. The ICC. And the ICC launched its own investigation and interestingly on June 8, 2006 The Wall Street Journal reported in a rarely mentioned but very important article that Uganda’s president himself, general Yoweri Museveni, contacted then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and asked him to block that investigation.
In other words a president, the sitting president of a country, was interfering with a criminal investigation and now the question is what happened? Who blocked that investigation?
Because going by reason and logic one would imagine that using the same set of facts that the ICJ used to determine that Uganda had indeed been liable for war crimes, the ICC might have ended up indicting General Museveni.
And that is why I say as far as I’m concerned I believe he is an unindicted war criminal and the question is who blocked that investigation?
If I am a president and a major newspaper like The Wall Street Journal says that I contacted the Secretary General of the UN and asked him to block a criminal investigation by the ICC at the very least I would sue The Wall Street Journal, at the very least, or I would make a statement denying what was published in The Wall Street Journal. That has never happened up to day.
He has never denied it, and he has never challenged The Wall Street Journal or filed a lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal.
