Dakar, Wednesday
The Gambia says it will pull of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after accusing the tribunal of persecuting and humiliating Africans.
The small West African nation joins South Africa and Burundi in withdrawing from the court.
The ICC was set up to try the world’s worst crimes but has been accused of unfairly targeting African leaders.
Gambian Information Minister Sheriff Bojang said the court had ignored Western war crimes.
He said the ICC, for example, had failed to indict former British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war.
Humiliating Africans
Speaking on state television, he said the ICC was “an International Caucasian Court for the persecution and humiliation of people of colour, especially Africans”.
“There are many Western countries, at least 30, that have committed heinous war crimes against independent sovereign states and their citizens since the creation of the ICC and not a single Western war criminal has been indicted,”said Bojang.
“The ICC, despite being called International Criminal Court, is in fact an International Caucasian Court for the persecution and humiliation of people of colour, especially Africans”.
The ICC, set up in 2002, is often accused of bias against Africa and has also struggled with a lack of cooperation, including from the United States, which has signed the court’s treaty but never ratified it.
The Gambia has been trying without success to use the court to punish the European Union for deaths of thousands of African migrants trying to reach its shores.
South Africa said last week that it had formally begun the process of withdrawing from the ICC because it did not want to execute arrest warrants which would lead to “regime change”.
Last year, a South African court criticised the government for refusing to arrest Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the court.
Leave ICC
Burundi has also said it will leave the court, while other Africa countries like Kenya and Namibia have said they might.
All but one of the ICC’s 10 investigations have been Africa-based.
The ICC has appealed to both South Africa and Burundi to reconsider. “I urge them to work together with other States in the fight against impunity, which often causes massive violations of human rights,” Sidiki Kaba, president of the assembly of state parties to the ICC’s founding treaty, said in a statement Monday. -BBC
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