Bringing the U.S. before the International Criminal Court

On June 18, a Pan-African delegation will deliver a petition to The Hague, Netherlands, demanding that the International Criminal Court prosecute the US, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and NATO for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This delegation maintains that the ICC has become another weapon in the Western countries' campaign to recolonize Africa and African people.

According to human rights attorney Roger Wareham, “The crimes we are charging them with were committed during: the NATO invasion of Libya and the overthrow and assassination of Libya's Col. Muammar Gaddafi; the US-led overthrow of Haiti's duly elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004; the French military intervention that resulted in the capture and arrest of President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast; the institutional racism the US inflicts upon its Black population, particularly reflected in racial profiling, stop & frisk, and incarceration rates; the sanctions campaign designed to punish President Robert Mugabe for returning the land stolen by white settlers to the indigenous people of Zimbabwe.”

This campaign to the ICC began on May 19, 2011 when the December 12th Movement and several organizations (the Nation of Islam, CEMOTAP, WADU, AAPRP) which had gathered to celebrate Malcolm X's birthday pledged to hold a "Millions March in Harlem" rally to protest US/NATO bombing of Libya, attacks on Zimbabwe and the racist US assault on Black folks. The hugely successful rally was held on August 13 and was followed up with an historic International People's Tribunal at Columbia University Law School on January 14, 2012. The judges at the IPT, attorneys Lennox Hinds, David Comissiong and Rosemari Mealy found that the evidence presented made a prima facie case of crimes committed. It is the IPT findings which serve as the basis for the papers which the delegation will submit to the ICC on the morning of June 18.

That afternoon the delegation will hold a conference, "The ICC and the Task of Ending NATO's Immunity for War Crimes," at Erasmus University in The Hague. It will look at the institutional racist bias of the ICC – in its 10 years of existence the only cases being prosecuted are against Africans - and how participants can push forward the campaign to prosecute the NATO countries for their international crimes.

December 12th Movement Chairperson Viola Plummer said, “at the conference we will address the key role which the demand for reparations plays in our battle to defeat the Western campaign to recolonize Africa and Africans.” Presenters at the conference include, attorney David Comissiong of the Clement Payne Movement (Barbados), Baffour Ankomah, editor of New African Magazine, Mireille Fanon, President of the Frantz Fanon Foundation and expert on the UN Working Group on People of African Descent (France); attorney Richard Harvey, international law specialist (UK); Min. Akbar Muhammad of the Nation of Islam; Viola Plummer, Chair of the December 12th Movement; and attorney Roger Wareham, International Secretary General of the International Association Against Torture and December 12th member.

Again Viola Plummer, “This campaign continues the task Malcolm X left us to take our situation to the international arena. Upon the group's return from the Hague, we will, as usual, hold a community report back on what occurred and which way forward.”