Mernat Mafirakurewa, AfricaNews reporter in Johannesburg, South Africa
South Africa civil society organizations are putting pressure on President Jacob Zuma to distance himself from the African Union (AU) decision to ignore the arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
The organizations - the Human Rights Commission, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, the Centre for Human Rights at Pretoria University, the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention - said South Africa should do the proper thing and honour the Rome Treaty.
SA is a signatory to the Rome Statute under which the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established.
“South Africa is a signatory to the treaty and it therefore follows that it should honour the international treaty obligations. As a state party to the Rome Statute, SA is obliged to co-operate fully with the ICC in the arrest and transfer of President al-Bashir to the ICC, whether or not it agrees with the indictment,” the organizations said in a statement.
The ICC recently issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir and this requires signatory states to execute the warrant should he land on their soil. However, African countries connived to defy the ICC arrest warrant at the recent AU summit in Libya.
Libya was one of the first countries to ignore the ICC and host al-Bashir despite the international warrant against him issued in March.
Al-Bashir is accused by the ICC prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity for masterminding Sudanese government's violence that has led to the death of some 300,000 people in Darfur since 2003.
South Africa civil society organizations are putting pressure on President Jacob Zuma to distance himself from the African Union (AU) decision to ignore the arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
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