IJCentral: International Justice Central

“The Reckoning” yesterday completed its 30-day tour of European Human Rights Film Festivals, including 3 screenings sponsored by the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs in Zurich, Fribourg and Geneva.  It is always remarkable to experience a film with audiences, especially when the film is just coming out of the gate (the world premiere of “The Reckoning” was at the Sundance Film Festival 09 in January) where 6 full houses put the film in front of about 2,000 people.  During the European tour all 3 filmmakers (Pamela Yates, Peter Kinoy and myself) of “The Reckoning” we’re on hand for discussions and Q&As after the screenings, in Paris, Prague, London, Zurich, Fribourg, Geneva and The Hague.  It’s incredibly useful because you get a sense of how the film is working, what it is communicating to people who for the most part know little about the ICC, or have a narrow focus on one aspect of the international justice system.  Even many people who work at the ICC told us that until watching the film they hadn’t had a clear idea of how all the parts of the Court’s work came together in different parts of the world.  “The Reckoning” will be a great entry point for many, and with the follow through to IJCentral we hope to expand the global constituency for the ICC and international justice.

In The Hague premiere on April 3, a truly moving event with “The Reckoning” coming home in a sense, about 500 people packed the Spui Theater, and ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo was on hand to answer questions and talk about the work he is doing in his mandate to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide to justice.  At one point he asked members of the audience to rise if they worked or had worked at the ICC, and more than half the audience got up, followed by the rest of the audience which gave them a standing ovation.  It was a beautiful moment.  It was truly refreshing to see this unabashed enthusiasm for the Court during these difficult times when the ICC’s credibility is being challenged by the Arab League and the African Union over the warrants of arrest that have been issued for Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir. On top of that there are those critics who prefer to blame the Prosecutor for al-Bashir’s decision to expel humanitarian groups from Darfur’s Internally Displaced Persons camps, saying that ICC chose the wrong moment to issue arrest warrants.  Huh?  Nobody forced al-Bashir to ratchet up his criminal behavior by denying humanitarian aid to people he has forced into the camps in the first place, and it’s good to remember that Al-Bashir has been behaving like this for the twenty years since he took power in a military coup: he presided over the deaths of 2 million in the war with southern Sudan; in the 90s he armed and supplied and gave safe haven to the Lord’s Resistance Army so that they could keep on committing atrocities in northern Uganda; and for the past 6 years he has been attacking Darfur.  What would be a better time to issue an arrest warrant for a serial genocidaire like al-Bashir?