Take last week. On Tuesday, the International Criminal Court at The Hague announced it would be issuing summonses to appear against the so-called Ocampo Six. Immediately the news broke, Citizen TV interviewed its senior journalist Alex Chamwada to explain the meaning of the decision by Pre-Trial Chamber II.
Chamwada confidently told viewers that the six had been summoned “because the charges have been confirmed.” That, of course, was not true. After the six appear before the Court on April 7, a date will be set for confirmation of the charges. As the ICC itself explained, the six persons have not been charged and they are not suspects in the legal sense of the word.
And then on Saturday, the dailies broke the big story of President Kibaki’s letters to the UN in attempts to have the ICC process deferred ostensibly to set up a local tribunal. Main reason? Two of the Ocampo Six (certainly Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto) are “presidential front-runners” in the next election. They have a huge following and if they were tried, the move could plunge the country into chaos.
(Great foresight, Mr. President! What is the definition of impunity? Powerful politicians are above the law? We could borrow Uhuru Kenyatta’s tantrum: ‘Kwani hii Kenya ni ya mama yao?’)
Anyway, the Front Page report by Juma Kwayera in The Standard on Saturday carried potentially damaging inaccuracies. The report titled, ‘Revealed: Details of Kenya’s case to UN’, said President Kibaki violated ICC orders when he attended that political meeting with some of the Ocampo Six in Eldoret last month.
“Diplomats based in Nairobi say [Kofi] Annan and top US officials, after reviewing TV footage and reports of ICC agents in which President Kibaki attended rallies in an open show of defiance, are said to have called for the speeding up of the process to preempt an outbreak of violence,” The Standard reported.
“At the rally attended by Kibaki, Ruto, Uhuru and Kosgey sandwiched the President and would occasionally engage in discussions with him.”
Sources at the Office of the President reportedly told The Standard on Saturday that the President was made aware of the breach, which resulted in his refusal to meet two MPs who had gone to see him.
The story was accompanied by a picture with the following caption: “Last month, President Kibaki breached orders by the ICC when he attended a meeting in which Henry Kosgey, William Ruto and and Uhuru Kenyatta were present.”
In fact no orders have ever been issued by the ICC barring Kibaki from meeting any or all of the six. Prosecutor Ocampo had on December 15 applied for orders barring the six suspects from meeting, among other conditions. At the time of the Eldoret meeting there were no orders in place. And in the ruling issued by the Court last week the orders were not granted.
The six were only ordered to have no contact directly or indirectly with any victim or a witness, to refrain from corruptly influencing a witness, obstructing or interfering with the attendance or testimony of a witness, or tampering with or interfering with the Prosecution's collection of evidence; to refrain from committing crime(s) set forth in the Statute; and to attend all required hearings at the International Criminal Court.
Thus the report by The Star last Friday was also inaccurate: “Suspended Higher Education Minister William Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang yesterday defied the ICC rule stipulating they should not meet as they joined hands with MPs and church leaders at a special prayer ceremony for the Ocampo Six in Kapsabet town.”
But there was something potentially damaging to the ICC’s reputation in the Standard report. The Court was portrayed without sufficient proof as being amenable to manipulation by Annan and unnamed Western diplomats. It was shown as a Western outfit when, as a matter of fact, the ICC is part of the Kenyan justice system via the International Crimes Act 2008 and the Constitution.
And then there was another piece of misinformation in the Sunday Nation of March 13. The paper ran an article titled ‘Dark and sunny sides’, about the prospects of the Ocampo Six. Ruto’s sunny side was described as follows: “He has been able to demystify Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo as he was the first to travel to The Hague to challenge the case.”
That is false. Ruto’s much hyped visit to The Hague last November, even before Ocampo named him, was the lowest point in media coverage of the ICC process so far. The Fourth Estate was duped by Ruto’s smart aides. It later emerged that the MP neither met Ocampo, who was away on holiday, nor “challenged the case”. How did he do so? The visit was just a publicity stunt.
The media has a big challenge to report the ICC process accurately - in a country where we tend to see nearly everything through the prism of partisan politics.
Source http://www.eastafricapress.net/
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