Another unwelcome ICC arrest warrant?
Nov 30, 2024
On November 27, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant against Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military junta, for his role in the commission of crimes against humanity against his country’s Rohingya minority.
This announcement comes at an awkward moment for American politicians of both parties who have been promising to impose sanctions on the ICC, its Prosecutor, its judges and their families as punishment for the ICC’s “outrageous” issuance of arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for their roles in the continuing atrocities in the occupied State of Palestine that the International Court of Justice has ruled evidence a “plausible” case of genocide, with Senator Tom Cotton has even threatening, in accordance with genuinely outrageous American law, to invade the Netherlands to rescue any Israeli taken into ICC custody.
After all, the U.S. State Department has formally called the Myanmar regime’s atrocities against its Rohingya minority a genocide.
Logically, the U.S. government, which, as some may recall, praised the ICC for issuing an arrest warrant against President Vladimir Putin, should now praise the ICC Prosecutor for seeking this arrest warrant against Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and urge the relevant panel of judges to issue it promptly.
However, this new arrest warrant request is seriously problematic for Israel’s loyal and obedient servants in Washington, risking, should they either praise it or proceed to sanction the ICC or both, a truly dazzling demonstration of hypocrisy on steroids and a vivid confirmation of Rule No. 1 of the American-dictated “rules-based order“: “It is not the nature of the act that matters but, rather, who is doing it to whom”.
The world is most likely to hear a stunned silence regarding this new arrest warrant request from the American political class, which, ideally, might even pause to reconsider whether it is really desirable to further disgrace the United States by punishing the ICC for trying to apply international law, in accordance with its mandate from its 124 member states, without fear or favour.
John Whitbeck
John V. Whitbeck is a Paris-based international lawyer.
Contributions to Pearls and Irritations
Your contribution will fund quality independent comment and analysis in Pearls and Irritations
Contribute
