ICC arrest warrant for Putin a bold move


LAST Friday, the world was astonished to learn that two Russian leaders had been issued with arrest warrants by The Hague for alleged war crimes committed by their government.

The two are President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.

The warrants were issued following a report by Yale School of Public Health on the “unlawful deportation” of about 6,000 Ukrainian children.

The report states that the children were put in a “re-eductation camp” by the Russian administration in an “ostensible effort” to make them more pro-Russia in their personal and political views.

Putin is the third sitting head of state to have been issued with an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC), after former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.

Essentially, the warrants against Putin and Lvova-Belova specify two main breaches of the Rome Statute, namely article 8(2)(a)(vii) (war crime of unlawful deportation of population [children]) and article 8(2)(b)(viii) (unlawful transfer of population [children]) from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.

The war crimes of unlawful deportation are substantially derived from article 49 of the Geneva Convention, which deals with forcible transfers. Initially, the convention forbids all forms of forcible transfers of the civilian population “regardless of motive”.

The issue of forcible transfers, now reframed as unlawful deportation, had once been decided in the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia case of Dragan Nikolić for the unlawful transfers of civilians from the Susica camp to the Batkovic camp.

Interestingly, the trial chamber in the Rule 61 in that case also suggested that the facts could have been categorised as crimes against humanity.

In fact, the issue of unlawful deportation was also raised multiple times by the United Nations Human Rights Council in the case of mass deportation of Palestinians by the Israel government from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to no-man’s land between Israeli-controlled territory and Lebanon.

For the aforementioned crime, one possible exception on which the Russian authorities may raise as a defence is that there was real military necessity to deport the Ukrainian children. For such a defence, Putin would have to argue that there was an imperative military reason that so demanded the deportation.

However, a perfunctory reading of the report would suggest that the deportation was intended to serve, in some ways, the interests of Russia as being the occupation power, that is by propagating pro-Russian agenda.

Such serious crimes, if so committed, may also entail a legitimate question of genocidal crime. The same reference may be drawn from the unofficial Uighur tribunal led by Geoffrey Nice KC for the conduct of China in relation to the treatment of the Muslim minority in Xinjiang.

It is, however, highly premature, at this juncture to speculate the matter in that Putin has not yet been subject to proper investigation, and indictment is still yet to come.

Yet, this might be the right direction in ending impunity, one might suggest, that ICC is now having guts to actually investigate a leader of a superpower in world politics.

Whatever the outcome, ICC left an indelible mark in the history of international criminal law last Friday.

It is indeed a powerful figure that is now being put under scrutiny of the global institutions rather than a typical vanquished individual losing its place in the domestic politics. – March 24, 2023.

* Muhammad Naufal Mohamed Hanipa reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.


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