According to reporting in Sudan’s media, the country’s president – Omar Bashir – is to pay an official two-day visit to Uganda this week for talks with Yoweri Museveni on relations between the two countries, set to follow Museveni’s inauguration on Thursday for his fifth term of office.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued two arrest warrants against Omar Bashir for crimes in Darfur – one for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and one for genocide. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and some 2.5 million people remain displaced amid continuing atrocities in Darfur, largely overlooked by mainstream media (see for example reports on Radio Dabanga and analysis by Eric Reeves).
As a signatory to the Rome Statute of the ICC, Uganda has an obligation to enforce the warrants, but failed to do so when Bashir visited in August 2015 – its Foreign Ministry citing an AU policy of non-cooperation with the Court. Museveni himself was quoted saying he could not arrest Bashir in Uganda. Only weeks earlier, however, South Africa’s High Court had ordered Bashir’s detention while he was present in Pretoria for an AU summit. In defiance of its own judiciary, the South African Government allowed Bashir to leave anyway.
“We urge the Ugandan judiciary and the Ugandan Government to uphold Uganda’s international legal responsibilities by ordering Bashir’s arrest if he enters their jurisdiction,” says Dr Mukesh Kapila, the Aegis Trust’s Special Representative on Crimes Against Humanity, who as UN Sudan chief in 2004 blew the whistle on the Darfur crisis. “Over 100,000 civilians have been displaced in Darfur this year alone, simply because of their identity. When will national courts, governments and leaders show solidarity with these people and stop allowing the criminal cabal in Khartoum to continue getting away with mass murder?”
