"Landep News"
Omar al-Bashir
Malawi received him with military honors and announced it refused to execute the international arrest warrant in the name of the Sudanese president. The Information Ministry in Malawi announced that it was not their government’s business to arrest him.
Malawi, which is a signatory to the ICC, was urged by the European Union, the human rights groups and even by the Malawi opposition to execute the mandate to arrest the president Bashir.
A spokesman for Catherine Asthon, the EU chief of foreign policy, said that crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes must not go unpunished, and that they must be addressed at both domestic and international levels.
Information ministry explained that Bashir could not be arrested while he is attending the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, which is a regional bloc. The spokesman also said that Malawi was honored to host these heads of states that attend this trade summit.
Some analysts consider that the refusal to arrest Bashir should not come as a big surprise, given that Malawi president Mutharika has become a critic of the ICC, which he accuses of discriminately targeting African leaders.
Mutharika also believes that Africa should set up a criminal court of its own to judge this kind of allegations.
Omar al-Bashir is the first African leader to be indicted by the ICC for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. Colonel Muammar al Qaddafi, former leader of Libya also received an international warrant from the ICC as a result of the crackdown on people in his country earlier this year.
Bashir is accused of having allowed a genocide in Darfur, a breakaway province of Sudan, as a result of which 2.7 million people were displaced and 300,000 died, most as a result of diseases.
The African Union has demanded the international court to suspend this arrest warrant, and other African countries refused to execute it. Last year, Bashir attended a ceremony dedicated to the new Kenyan constitution, and he was not arrested by the Kenyan authorities, causing the international community to protest. He also went to China, where he signed a few trade agreements.
Since the partition of Sudan, which was the result of the referendum on independence in January, which decided by an overwhelming majority that South Sudan would become a new country, it was expected that the fair attitude of the president towards the partition of the country would lead to a suspension of the warrant. Bashir was the first to announce that he would respect the results of the referendum and that he would do whatever in his power to make sure the transition is smooth, and he even made good on his word.
Soon after the independence of South Sudan, Bashir proclaimed the new republic in Sudan, a republic rooted in the Islamic shariah law and in the Arabic language. He also announced that the conflict in Darfur and the one in the Nuba Mountains would be resolved.
Still, over the summer human rights activists filed a report by the United Nations showing that the governmental troops of Bashir are responsible for mass graves and displacement of the population of the Nuba Mountains, who have fought alongside the South Sudanese army during the civil war that lasted for 22 years.
If the United Nations confirms the new evidence it is possible for Omar al-Bashir to remain under the arrest warrant.
President Mutharika is expected to bare the brunt of his refusal to arrest Bashir, which will make his situation even more complicated, considering that the international aid for his country was suspended last year, causing people to revolt.
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