Tapping into the world's conscience
Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Learning Curve: Perspective
New Sunday Times - 23-09-2012
LEADERSHIP AND MORALITY: Revisiting Sept 11 and human rights abuse in conflicts
THE Sept 11 anniversary, which is closely intertwined with the invasion of Iraq, is always remembered with a heavy conscience.
It is particularly so this year when, after almost a decade, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in The Observer (Sept 2) of the United Kingdom: "The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history."
The article titled Why I Had No Choice But To Spurn Tony Blair (And George Bush) raised a pertinent question: if leaders lie, then who tells the truth?
"Days before George W. Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world."
But Rice demurred justifying that there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.
According to Tutu, a veteran peace campaigner who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality.
Bush and Blair should not have stooped to the immoral level of Saddam, causing the death of more than 100,000 people by a conservative estimate, with millions more displaced.
"Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?" asked Tutu.
The latest spectre of Syria is driving us to the edge of a precipice with a possibly larger Middle East conflict.
David Hoile, who wrote The International Criminal Court (ICC) -- Europe's Guantanamo Bay?, remarked that the ICC has ignored all European and Western human rights abuse in conflicts such as those in regions brokered by Western colonial powers such as Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The same applies to human rights abuses by Western client states. The Europeans have chosen to let the court focus exclusively on Africa.
The ICC, for example, has indicted 27 Africans while turning a blind eye to self-evident human rights abuse elsewhere despite more than 8,000 complaints about alleged crimes in at least 139 countries.
The court has started investigations into just five countries; curiously all of them African.
Not surprisingly Hiole revealed that ICC, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year after being ratified in 2002 by a mere 60 countries (excluding major nations outside Europe such as China, Indonesia, Russia and the US that do not recognise ICC), is tied to the European Union -- namely Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- which provides some 60 per cent of its funding. As the expression goes, "he who pays the piper calls the tune".
Last year the Kuala Lumpur War Crime Tribunal convened a four-day public hearing to determine whether Bush and Blair committed crimes against peace and violated international law by invading Iraq. The effort is said to be modelled after a 1967 Vietnam war crimes panel convened in Sweden and Denmark by philosopher Bertrand Russel and Jean-Paul Satre where US committed an act of aggression against Vietnam and caused massacres among innocent population, notably that of My Lai.
The Kuala Lumpur tribunal saw a seven-member panel of judges including peace activist Alfred Lambremont Webre of the US and Niloufer Bhagwat of India.
This is the first time that war crimes charges was heard against the two former heads of state in compliance with proper legal process.
The tribunal is one of moral conscience that is severely lacking among global leadership today as pointed out by Tutu.
- The writer is the vice-chancellor of Albukhary International University
New Sunday Times - 23-09-2012
LEADERSHIP AND MORALITY: Revisiting Sept 11 and human rights abuse in conflicts
THE Sept 11 anniversary, which is closely intertwined with the invasion of Iraq, is always remembered with a heavy conscience.
It is particularly so this year when, after almost a decade, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in The Observer (Sept 2) of the United Kingdom: "The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history."
The article titled Why I Had No Choice But To Spurn Tony Blair (And George Bush) raised a pertinent question: if leaders lie, then who tells the truth?
"Days before George W. Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world."
But Rice demurred justifying that there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.
According to Tutu, a veteran peace campaigner who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality.
Bush and Blair should not have stooped to the immoral level of Saddam, causing the death of more than 100,000 people by a conservative estimate, with millions more displaced.
"Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?" asked Tutu.
The latest spectre of Syria is driving us to the edge of a precipice with a possibly larger Middle East conflict.
David Hoile, who wrote The International Criminal Court (ICC) -- Europe's Guantanamo Bay?, remarked that the ICC has ignored all European and Western human rights abuse in conflicts such as those in regions brokered by Western colonial powers such as Gaza, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The same applies to human rights abuses by Western client states. The Europeans have chosen to let the court focus exclusively on Africa.
The ICC, for example, has indicted 27 Africans while turning a blind eye to self-evident human rights abuse elsewhere despite more than 8,000 complaints about alleged crimes in at least 139 countries.
The court has started investigations into just five countries; curiously all of them African.
Not surprisingly Hiole revealed that ICC, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year after being ratified in 2002 by a mere 60 countries (excluding major nations outside Europe such as China, Indonesia, Russia and the US that do not recognise ICC), is tied to the European Union -- namely Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- which provides some 60 per cent of its funding. As the expression goes, "he who pays the piper calls the tune".
Last year the Kuala Lumpur War Crime Tribunal convened a four-day public hearing to determine whether Bush and Blair committed crimes against peace and violated international law by invading Iraq. The effort is said to be modelled after a 1967 Vietnam war crimes panel convened in Sweden and Denmark by philosopher Bertrand Russel and Jean-Paul Satre where US committed an act of aggression against Vietnam and caused massacres among innocent population, notably that of My Lai.
The Kuala Lumpur tribunal saw a seven-member panel of judges including peace activist Alfred Lambremont Webre of the US and Niloufer Bhagwat of India.
This is the first time that war crimes charges was heard against the two former heads of state in compliance with proper legal process.
The tribunal is one of moral conscience that is severely lacking among global leadership today as pointed out by Tutu.
- The writer is the vice-chancellor of Albukhary International University