Belgium’s genocide law

Date: 19/04/03

Why Belgium is changing its law against genocide

A SMALL country with aspirations to be a moral superpower, Belgium ten years ago enacted a law on genocide and crimes against humanity that was meant to put it in the glorious vanguard of the fight for human rights. Now, after American protests, the law is being changed.

Earlier this year some Iraqis lodged accusations in a Belgian court against George Bush senior, Colin Powell and General Norman Schwarzkopf, blaming them for the deaths of Baghdad schoolchildren in the first Gulf war. Belgium's genocide law, one of the most far-reaching of its kind, lets non-Belgians lodge complaints even against non-Belgians and even for alleged crimes committed outside Belgium.

In the past the law has been used to prosecute those who committed crimes in Rwanda, once a Belgian colony. (Four Rwandans were convicted and imprisoned in 2001.) But it also offered an open invitation for politically-motivated people to bring cases against anyone they disliked. The roll-call of targets includes Israel's Ariel Sharon, Palestine's Yasser Arafat, Cuba's Fidel Castro and Iran's Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The case against Mr Sharon was taken up by activists in the city of Antwerp who, coincidentally or not, have been raising tension there between Jews and Muslims. It was quashed earlier this year because Mr Sharon enjoys immunity, under the Belgian law, as the incumbent prime minister of a foreign country. Most of the other complaints are yet to reach court but they still embarrass Belgium, since it plays host to such international organisations as the European Union and NATO. Mr Powell, America's secretary of state, said NATO might have to move its headquarters unless Belgium changed its ways.

So change Belgium will. Its parliament, in a last act before next month's general election, has approved a revision of the genocide law. Complainants will have to show a direct link between themselves and the crimes alleged. The federal prosecutor has been given more reasons to throw cases out. Where the crimes happened outside Belgium and the accused are not Belgian, the government can now refer cases to the newly-created International Criminal Court in the Netherlands or to the courts of a country that accepts the ICC's jurisdiction. And, to the dismay of Socialist and Green politicians, under the terms of what has become known as “the Bush clause”, the law will even let the government refer a case to the court of a country that has not put its name to the ICC, such as the United States, provided it has a fair judicial and democratic system.

So Belgian idealism has been circumscribed. And doubtless the Bush family, pere et fils, will breathe more easily.

Why Belgium is changing its law against genocide.