Even signatories to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Hungary and South Africa, signaled this Thursday (23) that they should not comply with the arrest order issued by the court in The Hague against Vladimir Putin if the Russian president visits these countries.
The Hungarian government was more assertive, assuring that Putin would not be detained in Hungarian territory, since the statute of that court was not enacted in the country.
“Hungary will not be able to detain Putin, because the ICC statute has not been enacted, as it is unconstitutional,” Interior Minister Gergely Gulyás explained to the press.
The ICC this month issued an arrest warrant against Putin as allegedly responsible for the illegal deportation of children and their transfer from occupied areas in Ukraine to Russia, which amounts to a war crime under the Rome Statute, the court’s founding treaty. which was signed by 123 countries.
After the ICC announcement, the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, stressed that, from now on, Putin can be detained “immediately” in “more than 130 countries”.
Hungary has not incorporated the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding document, into its legislation for over 20 years, despite having signed it in 1998 and subsequently ratified it.
The Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán, considered Moscow’s main ally in the EU and in power since 2002, also failed to take steps to formally incorporate him into the country’s legal body.
On Thursday, Gulyás declared that the ICC statute is partially incompatible with the Hungarian constitution.
“The government has not commented on the arrest warrant against Putin”, recalled the minister, adding that the international court’s decision against Putin “does not favor peace”.
Hungary, a member of NATO and the EU, refuses to send weapons to Ukraine and has banned the transport through its territory of military material destined for the attacked neighboring country.
South Africa
In turn, the Minister of International Relations of South Africa, Naledi Pandor, confirmed this Thursday that her country invited Putin to participate in the August Summit of the BRICS, despite being the target of the arrest warrant issued by the ICC.
“President Putin is one of the leaders of the BRICS and he is invited to the summit, although I think the ICC mandate is cause for concern,” Pandor told reporters in Pretoria during an official visit to South Africa by the kings of Belgium. , Philippe and Mathilde.
As a member of the ICC, South Africa, which will host the summit of the bloc’s heads of state and government in Durban in August, is obliged to cooperate in Putin’s arrest.
“We should have a discussion with the cabinet [do governo
sul-africano] to decide how we are going to act”, declared the chancellor, whose country occupies the rotating presidency of the Brics this year, indicating that this debate will take place as soon as possible.
The head of Foreign Affairs made the comment after Russia said it trusts South Africa to ensure effective work for all countries and their representatives at the summit.
“I have mentioned on other occasions the problem of double standards in global affairs. There are many other countries that have been involved in wars, invasions of territories, murders of people and arrests of activists, but none of them have been targeted by the ICC,” added Pandor.
In addition, the head of South African diplomacy opined that “it seems that if you are powerful and enjoy a certain status in the international community, you can escape and this worries us because it obscures the objectivity of the ICC as a fair arbiter”.
In June 2015, the South African Executive found itself in a similar situation when the then President of Sudan, Omar Al Bashir, who was the subject of an arrest warrant for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, attended a summit of the African Union (AU) in Johannesburg.
Pretoria claimed that it could not arrest Al Bashir due to his diplomatic immunity as head of state and allowed him to land in the country, but the president returned to Sudan in less than 48 hours to avoid problems with the Justice, which, in compliance with the ICC, ordered his prison.
The international court decided months later to open a case against South Africa for lack of cooperation, but in 2017 it refused to submit the situation to the UN Security Council to protect future cooperation with the African country.
South Africa declared last year that it would adopt a neutral position on the war in Ukraine, calling for dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the conflict.
This position is not only linked to the strategic political and economic role that Moscow has in some African countries, but also to historical reasons, such as Russian support for anti-colonial movements and others from the 20th century, such as the fight against the segregationist apartheid regime.
Brazil, Russia, India and China created the Bric group in 2006, which South Africa joined in 2010, adding the letter S (from English South Africa) to the current acronym.
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