Genocide stunt is madness gone over the Brink
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term genocide as: “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
My immediate reaction to the Mail&GuardianOnline headline “Genocide charge laid against Achmat” was to check the date and make sure that I hadn’t slept a Rip van Winkle-sized nap and woken up on April Fools’ Day. This had to be somebody’s idea of a very unrealistic joke.
But alas, it was no joke! Anthony Brink, a High Court advocate, of the Treatment Information Group, has indeed laid a charge of genocide against the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) Zackie Achmat with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, the Netherlands.
According to the Citizen newspaper, the TAC has dismissed the charge as preposterous and not worthy of comment. The SABC also reported that legal experts say Brink’s charge lacks substance and is likely to be thrown out of the ICC. While this is good news, a more serious issue has been highlighted; South Africa is host to some of the world’s extremist AIDS dissidents.
When Achmat himself called last year for Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang and Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour to be charge with genocide, I was shocked because it seemed such an extreme thing to do. Why would anyone feel so strongly about something that they would want such a charge brought against those they feel are responsible? But on reflection, he was rather desperate to save lives and maybe the means justified the end.
In Brink’s case the answer is probably that the Rath Foundation, which is funding his legal action, is not making nearly enough money from the sale of the vitamins it peddles to people living with HIV and AIDS as alternative treatment to ART. It can only be an outrageous publicity stunt through which Brink attempts to mislead people and the Rath Foundation hopes to make more money.
Among some of the people that have been successfully charged with genocide are the likes of Adolf Hitler, who is said to have been responsible for the deaths of no less than 6-million Jews during the Holocaust. He also slaughtered hundreds of “undesirables and decadents” (amongst these homosexuals, communists and Slavs) during his rise as the führer of Germany.
While the ICC and modern trials for those who commit genocide might be relatively recent measures, acts of genocide are not.
Maximilien Robespierre was the charming Frenchman who led the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Many men and women took the undignified walk to the guillotine, among them King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, during his reign in the late 1700s.
Credited with the deaths of 300 000 people in Uganda, Idi Amin remains one of Africa’s most terrifying dictators. He is said to have dubbed himself, “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” He was obviously crazy.
Is Brink implying that Achmat is as cruel as these people? Back at ya, Mr Brink.
That our ministers’ names should be on this list was something unimaginable but when you read the statistics and hear accounts of the conditions of people living with HIV and AIDS or dying from AIDS–related illness you found it in your heart understand Achmat’s frustration with the government. Trying to understand Brink’s reasoning is more of a challenge.
Unless something has gone terribly wrong and we have been misinformed by scientists and doctors all over the world, ART is the best shot that people living with HIV and AIDS have. Why then would we want one of the few people fighting for the average South African’s medical rights to be closeted – as Brink suggests would be suitable punishment for Achmat in his 59-page indictment – “in a small, white steel-and-concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him”?
Perhaps Brink is the one in need of the cage. If this madman is out there running loose, who knows how many people he will have killed by advising them not to take ART before he is stopped? –Akhona Cira