How Kenya’s President Kibaki ridiculed new constitution by elevating Omar al-Bashir, the genocidist of Sudan.
By Osita Ebiem
Special and Exclusive commentary for USAfrica, USAfricaonline.com and Nigeria360@yahoogroups.com
When the government of Kenya-led by the very aging Mwai Kibaki invited Omar al-Bashir, the war criminal of Khartoum to attend the inauguration of Kenya’s new constitution on the 27th of August 2010 in the name of trying to be a good neighbor, it knew what it was doing. Kenya’s President Kibaki was specifically dignifying the Sudan genocidist, al-Bashir who remains one of the most abominable blights on the face of the human race. He got to this horrible level of existence because of the rabid hatred and actions that he and his other Arabists types have executed against indigenous Africans.
We note that Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga and some other officials of the government have confessed to doing wrong in elevating the genocidist al-Bashir.
But the key issue remains that the Kenyan government should have realized that when it was being insinuated and goaded on by the fiction called the African Union in Addis Ababa that they never meant any good for Kenya or Kenyans. The African Union seems dominated and has proven over and over again to be promoters of the negative Arab agenda over the African continent.
Historically, the Arab world has contributed very little to the enrichment of the Black race/indigenous Africans other than the negative acts of enslavements, religious warfare and genocides especially against the Igbo christians of Biafra (east central and south eastern Nigeria, 1967-1970).
Just like many others of Black Africa heritage refused to become weaned from the aprons of the Arabs with their antics, the Kenyan government was completely conscious that they were making a mockery of decency and the supreme sanctity of human life when they were not being sovereign enough to condemn the willful destruction of human life and rather chose to celebrate genocide on fellow Black race with the perpetrator.
The people of Darfur and Southern Sudan were mass-murdered in their millions just because they were not liked by their radical Islamic neighbors in the same country and outside it. Kenya as the “good neighbor” is a witness to this heinous crime against humanity as committed by this man al-Bashir. Yet they felt that the best way to compliment him was to openly parade him alongside the Kenyan constitution. Complicity with any crime puts one in the same position as the criminal.
Although the Kenyan government said sorry, does that diminish this crime? Of course we all know that the answer is no.
A people’s constitution is their most sacred and cherished possession because it is the most important thing that preserves, sustains and advances a society.
The attainment of the position of leadership is supposed to be based on the trust reposed on the leaders by the people they lead and the trust must be earned over time. The truth is that Africa must learn and begin to think for itself and stop being puppets of all these people who do not have its interest at heart.
It does not leave anyone in doubt that by this genocidist al-Bashir association, the new Kenyan constitution has been tainted and can no longer be regarded by most human rights advocates and decent people as a symbol of hope and justice to all persons and their citizens because it was inaugurated in the facilitation and recognition of an executor of the terrible crimes of genocide. The genocide we are talking about is that of the same kind of people that this new constitution is meant to protect.
So on what moral basis can this new Kenyan constitution be said to be inaugurated; on falsehood and a celebration of the crime of genocide? Kenya is a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court. The Rome Statute is a set of rules made to regulate the conduct of the parties to it but on the occasion of the adoption of another set of rules – a nation’s constitution then the other is flouted willfully and deliberately.
Now that brings us to the point where we have to ask, what is wrong with the old Kenyan constitution? Is it being abandoned because it is faulty in any way, in what ways? This new constitution is said to be based on the United States constitution. What guarantee do we have that because the model has worked in the US so it will work in Kenya? The strength of all constitutions lies in the moral strength of the people who operate them. Now in all sincerity does the action of the Kenyan government in letting the Khartoum Criminal grace the inauguration leave anybody in doubt about how this new constitution would be treated?
Can anyone tell the African states that there is hardly ever anything wrong with any set of rules but that there is always everything wrong with the people when any constitution goes wrong? No legal instrument can by itself function or perform any duty. It is always the people who cause the statutes to perform the functions they were made to do.
This government in Nairobi and the people that operate it cannot live by any laws no matter how simple. The Rome Statute is simple enough and all the parts of it in regard with this matter are very clear, yet the Kenyan government chose to rubbish it by a willful amnesia, pretending ignorance so that they can apologize later. But the simple counsel which experience has shown does not go wrong is that it is always better safe than sorry.
Every decent person and organization warned or pointed out the illegality of their proposed action before it took place but they went ahead anyway.
United Nations former Secretary General (from Ghana) Kofi Anan, several human rights organizations, Amnesty International, amongst others tried to speak reason to Kenya about the consequences of their action but they were hell-bent on exhibiting crass irresponsibility and pure disregard for decency. They were bent on carrying out their predetermined act of willful and deliberate act to make nonsense of all laws and not just any laws but those that have to do with the sanctity of human life, genocide. By this singular action, all those behind this show of shame should be disqualified from presiding over the affairs of any society of humans.
Indeed the people over whom they rule should justly revolt against them.
For anyone who thinks that we are over-emphasizing the facts of the Kenya al-Bashir debacle, let us illustrate with a very recent and shameful history. The very disgusting fabrication called Nigeria is a perfect example of the predictable consequence of the horrifying charade that has just taken place in Uhuru Park in Nairobi. In the month of October 1963 the now moribund and failed geographical expression also known as Nigeria had just adopted a brand new constitution and in less than three years it had degenerated into the typical Africa’s willful amnesia, so between 1966 and 1970 it committed the worst kind of genocide that has ever been witnessed by humanity. The extent of this horrendous genocide is worse than anything anyone without any set of rules or constitution can ever imagine to duplicate.
In less than three years, the Nigerian state had their brand new constitution in which no doubt contained the sanctity of the human life and the respect of the right to life and property of every law abiding citizen, in one hand and in the other bombs and tanks and, bombed and murdered with relish 3.1 million defenseless Biafrans into oblivion. Constitutions and the enforcement of their tenets are supposed to instill order and civility in any society but it is only if the people adopting them are willing to conduct their lives by these injunctions.
The truth of this is not hard to establish when we consider the fact that Nigeria with their new constitution wide open before them went on the killing spree with reckless abandon. And what method did they use in murdering these 3.1 million Biafrans? With a fresh, glistening, refined and civilized constitution and with the glossy pages still smelling fresh of the printer’s ink in their hands, they stooped down and raped the girls and women of Biafra till they died. They opened up the bellies of pregnant mothers and took out the screaming fetuses and squished them like ants. They filled up watering wells with Biafran mothers, boys and girls and hauled heavy boulders over them.
Does anyone try to imagine that these babies, children and women were not dumb at the time they were being murdered? Yes, they could speak. So, they were screaming and crying and asking to be spared by their brand new constitution-wielding murderers. What about those who were beheaded and, how their blood speared and scattered and drenched their human butchers and smeared the pages of the brand new constitution?
That is the way it is when brutes adopt new and refined constitutions without the will to be refined and do the right thing. You begin to do the right thing when you stop acting to please any group to which you sheepishly want to belong and be approved of such as the African Union. It is not the constitution that refines the people by the mere possession of it but it is a willingly refined people that make a constitution what it will be – refined or defiled. While the brutal and horrendous genocide was going on against the Biafran little children and their mothers, what did the African Union do?
They dispatched Egypt as a member state to send men and arms to the genocide state Nigeria to enable them do a very thorough job. What did Britain the civilized nation that pride themselves in their so-called unwritten constitution and civilization do? They came with men, warplanes, bombs and poisons to kill off Biafran babies and small children. They went around the world and lobbied so that people with eyes would see nothing and say nothing about the genocide in Biafra.
The United Nations failed humanity while the mayhem lasted. USSR or today’s Russia, would not be left out, they came with all the centuries of civilization behind them and their socialist “progressive system” joined other European and Arab countries in slaughtering Biafran boys and girls and their mothers….
And what about United States whose model of constitution Kenya has just adopted, what part did they play in the Biafran genocide? They were neutral? So you think? But soon after Biafra had been bombed into near-obliteration, the United States came and got a very big chunk of the oil business share in the genocide booty in Nigeria. Therefore, the Biafrans of today will like to know the actual part that US played in the genocide in Biafra. Just for the sake of it, let the US come clean on the Biafran genocide. Let them give the world their official position in a clear language and put Biafrans’ minds at rest.
Before now Biafrans had tried to understand why Kenya never condemned the Biafran genocide and why their Ali Mazuri had the obnoxious conception of fictitiously putting the lucid poet Okigbo “on trial” — for dying for Biafra (Okigbo’s homeland). But today, Biafrans and progressives all over the world understand the driving reasons for Mazrui’s defense of Islamic-Arab-led genocide against the Igbo people and all Biafrans. In part, the event of the 27th of August 2010 in Mazrui’s homeland of Kenya has answered that question.
Finally, on al-Bashir at the Uhuru park in Nairobi, we believe the Kenyan government has made a mockery of itself and the credibility of the new constitution. The Kibaki-Odinga government has engaged — with al-Bashir — in a show of shamelessness.
•Ebiem has joined as a contributor on human rights and international issues to USAfricaonline.com and our blog Nigeria360@yahoogroups.com. This, his first commentary for USAfrica multimedia networks, has been edited for exclusive publication across USAfrica platforms. Web links to this page are permitted but archiving on any other web site is not authorized without written authorization from USAfrica’s Publisher Chido Nwangwu.
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WHY AMERICA SHOULD HALT THE GENOCIDE IN DARFUR, SUDAN. By CHIDO NWANGWU. Special to USAfricaonline.com, CLASSmagazine, USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston and The Black Business Journal
How ridiculed the constitution? Maybe the author is ridiculing himself by not laying the blames at the appropriate quarters. What are George Bush, Blair, Koffi Anan and all the others who propagated the war in Iraq on a false pretex of weapons of mass destruction doing in the world of free and well behaved people? It appears to me the ICC was created to hunt Africans and not the real perpatrators of war crimes. Did the court ever carry a proper investigation into who was at the back of the 9/11 attacks?African leaders have for the first time in a a controversial matter taken a stance and I hope they keep to their word and continue to stand against the vampires that come to destroy them.
ICC should investigate the people at the back fo the war in Congo, Ivory Coast, Rwanda and all other wars in Africa and see whether they are not the very people doing this nonsense in Africa. They should let people rest.