A former senior government minister Monday urged the international community to rally around the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the United States publicly announced plans to dismantle the Hague-based court ‘using ‘all the tools at our government’s disposal’.
Former foreign affairs minister Winston Dookeran, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of activities marking the 36th anniversary of the July 27, 1990 attempted coup by members of the radical Jamaat Al- Muslimeen group to remove the ANR Robinson government, said ‘we stand firm against those who would like to dismantle that organisation’. Robinson is regarded as the chief architect and the driving force behind the creation of the ICC, who had revived the dormant idea of a permanent global court by proposing it at the United Nations, which led directly to the Rome Statute
As prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Robinson had legal experts draft a proposal and delivered a landmark speech to the UN General Assembly asking the International Law Commission to study creating a permanent international criminal court in 2002.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently said that Americans would struggle to imagine a world in which U.S. soldiers, police officers, Border Patrol agents and elected leaders could be dragged before an international court, tried by judges from random countries across the globe, found guilty under international laws that Washington neither consent to nor control, and then imprisoned thousands of miles from America.
He said that the ICC was born at the turn of the century and had been ‘marketed as a narrow backstop to prosecute the gravest crimes.
‘Now the ICC and its allies seek a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states-and to prosecute and arrest our citizens,’ he said, adding ‘Americans never agreed to any of this’.
‘The Trump administration will always protect American service members from this threat. The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message-sovereign states over globalism. Those who benefit from American security must not stand idly by while those who provide that security are targeted. This is only the beginning. Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC-brick by brick, if necessary,’ Rubio added.
Dookeran said that the establishment of the ICC ‘took a long time and a lot of diplomatic initiatives.
‘But it did happen. And it was there, and it is there,’ he said, noting that ‘for very recent times, we have heard that there are some who would like to dismantle this institution.
‘Today, I want to say to you, who are here today, that the inspiration that you have provided us here today also should inspire us to ensure that we stand firm against those who would like to dismantle that organisation, and in fact, those who will not be able to do it, and we should discourage them from so doing.’
Dookeran, a respected international economist, who also served as prime minister during the 1990 attempted coup when Robinson was being held hostage by the insurgents, said the move to dismantle the ICC ‘is a big global situation, but it is one that reflects what is happening in the world.
‘What we are facing in Trinidad and Tobago is only but the reflection of what has happened throughout the world,’ he added.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar publicly declined to comment on the US push against the ICC when queried during high-level bilateral talks with an American delegation, offering a brief ‘not now’ response.