The front page story in today’s Australian covers Kevin Rudd’s somewhat bizarre declaration that a Federal Labor Government would attempt to take legal action against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the International Court of Justice on a “charge of incitement to genocide”.
It’s good to see that Labor’s foreign policy is all about inserting some steely Belgian-style moral rectitude back into Australia’s global citizenship. But it would also be nice if the sentiment came packaged in some equally nice, you know, credibility and, uh, legal correctness.
As Foreign Minister Alexander Downer points out with relish, Mr Rudd probably meant to say “the International Criminal Court”. And on that front, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has been telling Labor – politely no doubt – that prosecuting genocide is more his job, and if he’s not already on it there’s probably a good reason.
It is a noble aspiration. But it is also notable that Mr Rudd has decided to buy into the Government’s focus on Iran and Mr Ahmadinejad instead of a target closer to home, say, the military leadership of Burma. Apparently a legal move would “undermine the President’s international legitimacy and require him to “justify his inflammatory and destabilising posturing and rhetoric”.” It would certainly be so. But so too might more public debates in the manner of his disastrous appearance at Columbia University last week – less the astonishing attack by University President Lee Bollinger.
The way Mr Ahmadinejad is going, there won’t be much legitimacy left to undermine anyway. As a head of state, Mr Ahmadinejad is a walking publicity apocalypse. He seems capable of doing the job himself without too much assistance.
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October 3, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Robert Dunworth
As we have come to expect, it seems that Mr Rudd has been doing his homework. Unfortunately for Mr Rudd, it seems that while he had a quick look over the Genocide Convention, he got the wrong study notes to go with it. Mr Rudd’s statement follows the 11 January 2007 bill tabled in the US Congress by Congressmen Steve Rothman (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) calling on the UN to charge Mr Ahmadinejad with genocide following statements made at the World without Zionism Conference in Tehran on October 27 2005.
Messrs Rothman, Kirk and Rudd apply the genocide convention as it stands. Article 2 defines genocide. Article 3(c) states that direct and public incitement to commit genocide shall be punishable. Article 4 states that the punishment shall apply even to constitutionally responsible rulers. The catch is that the charge is to be brought before a competent tribunal of the state in which the genocide occurred (which I just can’t see happening) or before an international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction (Art 6). Consequently, the task falls back to Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, of which Iran is a State Party.
Perhaps Messrs Rothman, Kirk and Rudd referred to Art 9 when they stated that the charge should be brought before the ICJ. The Article states that questions of interpretation, application or fulfilment of the Convention shall be submitted to the ICJ, which is not my understanding of Mr Rudd’s comments. The only way to bring a charge of genocide against person in an international tribunal is through the ICC.
While I look forward to Mr Ahmadinejad being held responsible for some pretty abhorrent comments, they are very unlikely to meet the requirements for a charge of genocide. Nonetheless, I applaud Mr Rudd’s stated desire to have Mr Ahmadinejad held accountable under the rule of law.