Does the news of Life Imprisonments for the former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic open the eyes of the Sudanese judiciary to take the decision that the victims’ families have been calling for so Long Time
هل الخبر عن سجن مدى الحياة لقائد جيش صرب البوسنة السابق راتكو ملاديتش يفتح أعينالقضاء السوداني لاتخاذ القرار الذي تطالب به أسر الضحايا لفترة طويلة ؟
By Mahmoud A. Suleiman
This article comes against the backdrop of the news that has surfaced and been coming rapidly across the globe about the trial of one of the perpetrators of the crimes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Ratko Mladic. Accordingly, the Sudanese citizens are asking unabatedly as to whether those heinous crimes will open the eyes, conscience and the minds of the people of Sudan and their post-Glorious December Revolution leaders to send the aforementioned criminals to The Hague? Furthermore, the unanswered question says as to whether the legal penalties issued against the criminals of Bosnia and Herzegovina are applied to the criminals of the heinous crimes against the citizens of Sudan in the Darfur region?What a similarity between today and yesterday;as the novel writers tend to say? Furthermore, is this the hidden truth that emerged today on the surface to astonish everyone who read or heard this news?The story referred to revolves around the certainty of news; though it is to some extent ironic and partly unexpected that the Serbian leader, Ratko Mladic, was tried after about a quarter of a century yesterday, Tuesday 14th of June 2021, for the crimes of war and crimes against humanity and genocide.The goal, as determined by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was “ethnic cleansing” – the forcible expulsion of Bosnian Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs to clear Bosnian lands for a Greater Serbia.https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/bosnias-mladic-commander-europes-worst-atrocities-since-world-war-two-2021-06-08/
The Srebrenica massacre also known as the Srebrenica genocide was the July 1995 genocide and when so-calledthe Scorpions, a paramilitary unit from Serbia, who had been part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, also participated in the massacre.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre they were akin to the Janjaweed Militias used by the Génocidaire Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, the then President of the Sudan to carry out his planned crime by proxy.
At this junction, the paradoxes between the Bosnian Serb Butcher and the Darfur Génocidaire Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir arecompared. While the Serb leader Mladić, famous for the butcher of Bosnia, has been tried for life, Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir remains without a trial in a reformatory institution for the elderly criminals who might be suffering from geriatric diseases, even though al-Bashir butchered thousands of defenseless noncombatant civilian Sudanese citizens in the Darfur region of western Sudan – thus the paradoxes remain unabatedly looming. Al-Bashir has been ousted from his 30-year autocratic grip of power on 19 December 2018 by popular uprisings throughout Sudan, but he is still considered fugitive for a 12 years period from the International Justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague in the Netherlands. This illegal situation in Sudan continues despite the visit of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) , Ms Fatou Bensouda to Khartoum , as well as her visit to the IDP camps in the Darfur region in the western Sudan lately.There are suspected of five counts of crimes against humanity, two counts of war, and three counts of genocide allegedly committed in Darfur, Sudan.
As we know for fact that Omer Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, the former President of the Republic of Sudan has been fugitive from the International Justice since 16 October 1993 since the time of Arrest warrants were issued on 4 March 2009 and 12 July 2010. The Charges: five counts of crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, and rape; two counts of war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities, and pillaging; three counts of genocide: by killing, by causing serious bodily or mental harm, and by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction, allegedly committed at least between 2003 and 2008 in Darfur, Sudan and as we know for fact that the first warrant for arrest for Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir was issued on 4 March 2009, the second on 12 July 2010. The suspect is still at large.https://www.icc-cpi.int/darfur/albashir
The Eternal Un Answered Question as of June 2021 How do you rule in Sudan, you the Government of Dr. Abdullah Adam Hamdok and Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan aren’t these crimes enough to send Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir and his criminal entourage to The Hague in the Netherlands to confront the results and the consequences of the crimes and misdeeds they have so far committed and continuing fugitive?
Does the foregoing news open the eyes and the minds of the Sudanese judiciary to listen and to take the appropriate legitimate legal decision called for by the families of the genocide victims and the survivors in the Darfur region? Previous questions that cannot be promptly answered are waiting to be answered by taking the necessary decisions that have taken too long time. Ironically, some Sudanese citizens, originally from the Darfur region have thought as to whether the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), could be used for the trial of the perpetrators of the crimes committed against the victims in Darfur instead of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which proved “Toothless” over the years!
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, and was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet has been quoted as saying “The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!” Furthermore, he continued his poem that read: “When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”
― Bertolt Brecht, Selected Poemshttps://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/genocide
Amal El-Mohtar who is the Canadian poet and writer of speculative fiction who has published short fiction, poetry, essays and reviews and has edited the fantastic poetry quarterly magazine Goblin Fruit since 2006, she has been quoted as saying: “A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fugitive
Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and a blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/