Reactions to DRC's Lubanga at Maiden ICC Trial
Warlord’s Use of Child Soldiers Incites Protests in Bunia
Jan 27, 2009
Thomas Lubanga, who pleads not guilty to six charges of using hundreds of children aged under 15 to fight in his ethnic Hema militia, is said to have fought battles over gold and mining rights with the rival Lendu ethnic group. Both sides are accused of conscripting more than 30,000 child soldiers to fight in the bloody conflict.
On the morning of January 26, 2009, Lubanga stood as the first person ever to be tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, a frigid town bordering the North Sea. Meanwhile, viewers thousands of miles away glued themselves to huge television sets under the harsh Congolese sun in the warlord’s old-stomping grounds of Ituri, in the Bunia province.
Lubanga Supporters Threaten Violence over "Injustice"
Yet by the afternoon of the 26th, according to a January 27th, 2009 IRIN report "DRC: ICC Trial Goes Sour in Bunia," live screening of the trial was halted due to security concerns, as many of Lubanga’s supporters threatened to damage Bunia’s public hall should they not be granted admittance. Such fervent Lubanga supporters, such as Jean Baptiste Detsuvi, question the neutrality of the evidence being used in the ICC trial. “All the images and what the court is projecting as child soldiers are a set-up,” accused Detsuvi, “they are mistaken because in the DRC and especially in Ituri one [mis]takes someone of 20-25 to be a 14-year-old child.”
Lubanga’s lawyer Catherine Mabille also claims the ICC prosecution’s use of anonymous witnesses will obstruct justice in the case. According to the January 27, 2009 BBC release "Congo War Crimes Trial Unfair," Mabille asked the court, “How can we have a fair trial under [these] conditions," referring to the fact that the majority of victims will testify at the trial behind closed doors. “There has been a wholesale abuse of the rules by the office of the prosecutor,” she claimed, “The [situation] is prejudicial and detrimental to the defense.”
Activists Declare Victory; Civilians Focus Merely on Survival
Others, such as Param-Preet Singh, counsel in Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, see the trial as a victory in the global fight to quell a culture of impunity surrounding the use of child soldiers. According to Singh in a January 23, 2009 Human Rights Watch statement "DRC: ICC”s First Trial Focuses on Child Soldiers,” “This first ICC trial makes it clear that the use of children in armed combat is a war crime that can and will be prosecuted at the international level.”
Though lauded as an important milestone for human rights by international activists, on January 25, 2009, the BBC’s Karen Allen wrote in "Congo Trial Starts Road to Justice," that the trial barely falls within the radar of many Congolese, as a focus on survival often trumps issues of international justice in extremely impoverished and war-torn nations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“It wasn’t all bad,” says a boy named Bahati, recruited as Lubanga’s personal bodyguard when he was a mere 11 years of age. “I could get money from vehicle checkpoints and free food…” As in the aftermath of many wartime economies, Bahati now makes less than he did when working under Lubanga, and says his only priorities now are finding a job and something to eat.
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