IJCentral: International Justice Central

Now that Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno-Ocampo has released the names of the Hague Six, are there any surprises?

As for those deemed to be most responsible — against whom he has applied for summons to appear, again there are not many surprises.

To be frank, the most politically important names (in the sense of those with expressed aspirations for the next general election) have acted in a manner indicative of their expectations of the Prosecutor’s move.

Most notably through their documented (publicly and otherwise) efforts to track down and either bribe, otherwise coerce or discredit those they believe to be the ICC’s witnesses.

The only surprises are perhaps those from the bureaucracy and the private sector.

The statistics about the violence are still not widely accepted — particularly the fact that the Kenya Police and the Administrative Police were responsible for no less than a third of the deaths that occurred.

What remains to be seen is, of course, whether he has the evidence to sustain his applications and move those names successfully to trial — as well as to successful conviction.

And too, how not so much Kenyans, but Kenya’s bureaucracy and politicians, will react.

In short, whether or not the much-vaunted willingness to co-operate with the ICC, will continue to hold.

The Prosecutor’s applications have touched on those carrying the ethnic-political succession mantles of both the Gikuyu and the Kalenjin.

They have also touched on the person deemed to be the heart of the current presidency — without whom, nothing moves, neither bureaucratically nor politically.

Will they allow due process to pertain? Or will they — as the frenzy of activity of last week suggests — do all they can, however ill-considered, to stop the turning of the wheels of justice?

Some of their efforts have clearly come too late to be useful — such as the sudden resurgence of interest in the Special Tribunal initially recommended by the Commission of Inquiry into the Post-Election Violence.

Some of their efforts are, quite simply, ludicrous in their shortsightedness — such as the idea that Kenya should withdraw from the Rome Statute.

But all their efforts point to the same thing. The ethnic-political blocs of every persuasion and the bureaucracy are facing what they’ve never been forced to face before.

A problem that simply will not go away. An insistence on justice that will not be fobbed off with inquiries that trickle off into nothingness.

A demand for personal accountability that cannot be shoved under the carpet of unnamed, unashamed state responsibility.

No wonder they are shocked.

This has, quite simply, never happened before. And they do not know what to do other than what they have always done.

Which is to get all conspiratorial and try to get the ethnic-political troops behind them.

It’s the old arguments about external interference, foreign enemies and plots against their supposedly communal political interests all rolled into one.

It would be quite funny — if it were not so sad. It would be quite funny — if it were not so starkly evident from their antics just how little the victims and survivors of all of this matter to them.

Because of all this, no matter what happens with the cases as we go forward, the Prosecutor has done us a favour as a nation.

No matter what happens with the cases, something has been broken by last week’s announcement.

And something has irrevocably shifted. Justice is possible.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission

source: The East African