Pierre Nkurunziza has signed last week’s bill into law, effectively making Burundi’s exit from the ICC official. Burundi’s lower house of parliament last week voted overwhelmingly to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the heat turns up on its human rights violation for the past two years. After UN human rights investigators were banned from the country last week, its parliament decided to hold a vote to determine whether to stay or leave the ICC. An overwhelming 94 parliament members voted to leave, 14 abstained while 2 voted to stay. Now, the deed is done. This is very significant as no country in Africa has ever gone as far as voting to leave the ICC and ratifying it.
Already, there are indications other African countries will leave too. “African countries will quit the ICC one by one in the coming months and years,” Ambassador Ernest Ndabashinze, Burundi’s ambassador to the U.S., said last week Friday. “Many African governments now view the court as an instrument used to control, manipulate and impose foreign decisions on Africa,” he further said. This view has gained momentum in recent times, beginning with South African president Jacob Zuma’s shielding of Sudan’s president Al-Bashir from ICC prosecution late last year. The AU member countries also discussed leaving the ICC in their summit earlier this year.
To Pierre Nkurunziza, this is another victory. Ever since he was declared the winner of a controversial election held in Burundi last year, the East African nation has been the stage for various human rights violations, with many of Nkurunziza’s opposition members the victims. There have been street killings, kidnappings, free press repression, while many Burundians are migrating to neighboring countries like Rwanda. This is another notch in his belt in his journey to becoming a full-fledged dictator. Now, through his party members in the lower house of parliament, Nkurunziza has managed to secure what other African dictators are missing now; a sort of validation to their rule.
African role models Robert Mugabe, Yoweri Museveni, Jose Eduardo Santos and some others are dictators who seem to be running out of time and propaganda in their countries. After many years at the helm, the “legitimacy” granted them by the people is waning, and it’s only a matter of time before they are pushed away from their posts. Nkurunziza, on the other hand, represents an old but new breed of despots; charming, but rules through fear even in the 21st century. He has successfully managed to destroy his opponents while hounding others till they left Burundi.
Nkurunziza is the modern day dictator everyone wants to be. He’s managed to violate every human right there possibly is while keeping international bodies like the African Union and the United Nations out of his country without bowing to pressure. No mean feat that. The African Union, Dictator’s chapter, has for so long threatened to leave the ICC for its perceived bias in investigating and indicting only African countries, but none has started the process of actually leaving. Burundi is the first, and probably not the last.
An opposition Member of Parliament Fabien Baciryanino, who was one of the two to vote stay, said last week that withdrawing from the ICC was “no more, no less, than inciting the Burundian people to commit more crimes.” He’s probably right. For once there is no international body to keep Nkurunziza in check (though there would probably be sanctions from the U.S.). Though leaving the ICC is a complex process that takes about a year to complete, and crimes committed before the exit would still be investigated, there is ample time for Nkurunziza to cover up his crimes. The Dictator’s bloc will surely follow him now. They look to him now, he’s their captain.
