Bringing Than Shwe and His Henchmen to Justice

Burma’s brutal dictator, Than Shwe, has proved beyond doubt in the past two weeks that he is a dangerously unbalanced and evil man, determined to cling to power by all the means at his disposal. Brute force, deception, intimidation, lies—his armory is an arsenal of evil.

Such a monster has no place in a civilized world. He must be brought to justice, together with his loyal henchmen, who share with him the responsibility for the barbaric acts they unleashed on the streets of Rangoon and other Burmese cities and in the country’s monasteries.

But how can this be achieved? Again, the international community of nations with a conscience (and that rules out China, India and Russia) appears to be powerless. Since the war crimes tribunals of Nuremberg and Tokyo, they have created mechanisms to bring murderous dictators to book, but none seems equipped to deal with the criminal clique ruling Burma.

For a start, they are the creation of the UN, where Burma has powerful friends armed with the means to protect the generals from prosecution and punishment. International action to pursue criminal rulers has to begin within the UN Security Council, where China and Russia have already shown an indecent readiness to use their veto to guard their client government in Naypyidaw from any action that could disturb attempts to plunder Burma of its natural resources.

When the UN set up the International Criminal Court in 2002, the new body was officially said to be “spearheading the shift from impunity to accountability…bringing justice to thousands of victims and giving them a voice.” ICC regulations, however, exclude the Burmese regime from “accountability” and Burma’s martyred people from receiving “justice” and “a voice.”

In the past four years, the ICC prosecutor has opened investigations into just four cases, all of them in Africa, where the majority of the organization’s 105 member states are located.

Only one Southeast Asian country, Cambodia, has signed the ICC treaty of accession. Burma, of course, has not (but neither has the US)—and there lies the problem.

The ICC statutes rule that its jurisdiction covers only “cases where the accused is a national of a state party [to the treaty]” or where “the alleged crime took place on the territory of a state party.” Oh, there is one other possibility to prosecute a criminal dictator—if “a situation is referred to the Court by the United Nations Security Council.” Than Shwe’s personal hell would freeze over before that happens.

The ICC, however, is still in its infancy, its membership is widening (Japan joined on October 1) and legislators are still tweaking its rules. They should be urged to expand the organization’s jurisdiction to cover criminal rulers such as Than Shwe and his cronies, at least entering charges against them that would place them on an international “wanted” list.

In the final analysis, the ICC gives nations themselves the “primary responsibility to punish crimes,” a proviso which could be read as a laisser-passer for the Burmese people themselves to deal with Than Shwe and his criminal coterie. Secure now in their citadel, they would nevertheless do well to recall the fate of Rumania’s hated dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his evil wife, who were summarily executed after the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

There were no anodyne statements of concern when they were killed by the people they had oppressed for so long. The international community applauded, welcoming the departure of one more satanic regime. History dictates that the one now ruling poor Burma will inevitably go the same way.