Monday May 27, 2013 - The African Union accuses the International Criminal Court of "race hunting" - meaning that only African leaders are targeted as desperate attempts are made to protect new Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta from justice. Oh the wheels of justice. They sometimes appear to move too slowly in addressing the grievances of surviving victims but as sure as daylight they always get there and Uhuru Kenyatta will have his day in court. This is not a matter of African politics. It is a matter of international justice when impunity is encouraged in African countries by African governments.

The AU chair and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn believed he was speaking on behalf of Africa when in his closing statement at the end of the 21st session of the summit of the African Union accused the International Criminal Court, the ICC, of what he would like to call "race hunting" (simply put racist) citing his observation that some 99 percent of the cases pursued by the international court involved Africans. And this statement was supposed to have been from the hearts of African leaders who after fifty years of the founding of the pan-African body still cannot define what they should be doing to respect the rights of their own citizens as defined and laid out in the Charter of the African Union.

Prime Minister Desalegn's statement, we believe buttresses our suspicion all along that despite indicted ICC suspect Uhuru Kenyatta commitment and assurances that he would co-operate with the ICC to clear his family name (his father Jomo Kenyatta was the first leader of an independent Kenya in 1963), he was all along in actual fact plotting, together with his type at the African Union to defeat justice by raising the race card. We however note that in his closing remarks published on the African Union website, there is no such stance taken by the Ethiopian Prime Minister which has raised a number of worrying questions over the sincerity of the man who now takes over as Chairman for a whole year of the body, not the governing body, but the club of African "leaders"

It is worth noting that even before the accusation of the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Amnesty International, a rights group had warned on 24th May that African Union leaders must reject Kenya's lans to allow accused political leaders to escape justice. In a statement, African Union: Reject Kenya’s attempt to shield its leaders from accountability noted that -

"The Organisation of African Unity, the AU’s predecessor organisation, was founded to end the innumerable human rights violations meted out on Africans through the yoke of colonialism. Today, the AU must stand firm with the victims of human rights violations allegedly perpetrated by their own leaders. It is a shame that the Kenyan government’s predominant concern is the protection of its leaders from the ICC. At no point before the United Nations or the AU has the Kenyan government mentioned the needs of the victims of the 2007-2008 violence, their cries for justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition. The current initiative follows an effort earlier this month by Kenya's Ambassador to the United Nations for the UN Security Council to terminate the cases against Kenyan President Kenyatta and Vice-President Ruto. This is another worrying attempt by the Kenyan authorities to avoid justice. This initiative lacks any legal basis and will not result in the Trial Chamber of the ICC deferring the trial before it. Kenya’s diplomatic offensive is nothing more than an attack on the work of the International Criminal Court.”

The BBC reported on this statement and actually broadcast the words of the Ethiopian Prime Minister as he tried to justify why he and his type view the international court as racist, never mentioning the fact that had African government got free and unfettered justice systems in place, there would have been no need to refer such cases to the ICC.

 Indeed it is worth noting a report in the internationally-renowned Kenya Daily Nation newspaper in which the International Criminal Court made a swift response -