International law ineffective in battle against tyrants Posted Thursday, March 24 2011 at 00:00 I read the lamentations of my O.B (Busoga College, Mwiri), retired (but not tired) Justice George Wilson Kanyeihamba "Is international law bunk?" (Sunday Monitor, March 20) with tears streaming down my cheeks. Indeed the Devil came to kill and maim. Well over 1,000,000 civilians killed in the Rwanda invasion from Uganda by the RPF, more than 3 million civilians killed in Eastern Zaire in the joint military actions by RPF and UPDF, 668,051 civilians killed in Iraq, 7,373 civilians killed in Afghanistan, close to 400,000 and 500,000 civilians killed in the Northern region and Luweero Triangle of Uganda respectively. We now hear hundreds of civilians have been killed by King of Kings Muammar Gaddafi of Libya in his attempt to preserve his 42 years of abusing the rights of his own people. For long I didn't know why those who ascended to power, whether through elections (rigged or not) or the barrel of the gun, keep on creating and sustaining socio-political conditions that create killing fields today, tomorrow and well into the future. They waste resources building military arsenals (chemical, bacterial, hardware) to control the actions and minds of their people and harass them into silence so they can do anything they want without being called to account . Instead of governing to prepare humanity for sustainable peace, stability and development, they govern to prepare humanity for war and genocide, either in their lifetime or when they have gone to the world of spirits. Some turn the state into an assassination machine to eliminate their opponents. They stifle the media to deny public information; manipulate intelligence and lie to justify war internally or externally and stealing of public property. They abuse office and executive privilege and frequently fail to uphold accountability or to ensure that laws are faithfully executed to the benefit of all citizens. It is easy for them to bend the law when it is those in the patronage chain who have committed crime against humanity. Then they explicitly or implicitly use the army, police and prisons to torture the innocent or those suspected to be working against their regimes. Illegal domestic spying on citizens, such as tapping into their private telephone conversations, keeps their victims under constant fear of expressing or pronouncing themselves on matters that concern them such as accountability, abuse of human rights, justice, land grabbing, bad governance, nepotism, sectarianism, state terrorism, stealing votes, etc. They loom large and believe they are next to God. Those who have some faith in God or play the Machiavellian with regard to religion will say God rules in heaven and they rule on Earth in complete ignorance of the fact that God rules in both heaven and on Earth. And so they go on with their excesses. They tell the truth only by accident! For long I wondered why international law is so impotent in the face of excesses and crimes against humanity committed by the men in power. Why does international law bow when those who violate human rights and abuse justice of citizens are well known? Now I know that there is a plot by the global power elite working jointly with the political and [power] elite in the poor countries of the world to dominate our people as they rob whatever they can lay their hands on. This explains the conspiracy of silence global rulers. No. Citizens of the world rise against the bad men in power! Don't cry! Be part of the Tsunami of global resistance and empowerment! Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula is an environmental, political and social critic.afunaduula2000@yahoo.co.uk
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