Millions Tortured, Murdered While West Turns A Blind Eye
The whole world knows about the mass murderers Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin and Mao Tse Tung but what about Hissene Habre, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Efrain Rios Montt and Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
The answer is simple; most of the victims who died at the hands of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao were white or Asian. Most of those killed and tortured by the likes of Habre, Marian, Montt and a-Bashir were black or Latino. It is no accident that the world’s concern is largely for victims of European carnage while annihilation of Africans and other people of color get relatively scant publicity.
These tyrants, relatively unknown outside of their nations, tortured and killed, raped, enslaved and abused child soldiers while they displaced millions of people.
The story of Habre, former president of Chad, is the topic of “To Catch a Dictator,” a new book by Reed Brody.
France conquered Chad by 1920 and incorporated it as part of French Equatorial Africa. The French saw the colony as an unimportant source of untrained labor and raw cotton. Most of its inhabitants live in poverty as subsistence herders and farmers.
In 1960, Chad gained independence under the leadership of François Tombalbaye. Resentment towards his policies in the Muslim north culminated in the eruption of a long-lasting civil war in 1965. Tombalbaye was overthrown in 1979 by rebel factions led by Habré.
Longtime Chad President Idriss Déby died on April 20, 2021, and both the nation’s National Assembly and government being dissolved and national leadership was again replaced with a transitional military council, which has promised elections by 2023.
Habre was president of Chad from 1982 until he was deposed in 1990. In 1992, a national truth commission estimated that Habre and his political police were responsible for the systematic torture and the deaths of 40,000 Chadians while Habre robbed the nation of millions of dollars.
Habre took control of Chad in a coup, largely with the support of the U.S., which provided significant cash and arms. President Ronald Reagan saw Habre as a strong opponent of neighboring Libya and its president, Moammar Gaddafi. France also supported Habre with training, arms, and financing.
After meeting with Habre in 1987, Reagan praised him for his commitment to “building a better life for the Chadian people,” adding that the United States “will continue to do our best, to work with France and other steadfast partners in the international effort to help reach President Habre’s laudatory goals.”
For nearly 25 years, Habre “enjoyed a comfortable exile” with “villas and servants and dazzling views of the Atlantic Ocean.”
He was arrested in June 2013 at his compound-in-exile in Dakar, Senegal.
After his arrest, a judge in Senegal charged Habre with torture and other crimes. But Senegal’s new president, Abdoulaye Wade, appointed Habre’s lawyer as his legal adviser, and the indictment was dismissed. The court ruled that Senegal had no jurisdiction over egregious crimes committed in another country.
In September 2005, a Belgian judge indicted Habre for the second time. In May 2016, Habré was found guilty by an international tribunal in Senegal of human-rights abuses, including rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people. He was the first former head of state to be convicted for human rights abuses in the court of another nation. He was sentenced to life in prison but Habre was never imprisoned as he died on Aug. 24, 2021 at the age of 79, after testing positive for COVID-19.
Habre’s conviction was highly unusual in international law enforcement . The International Criminal Court in The Hague has indicted and convicted just three rebel warlords and no heads of state in its first 18 years.
Like others convicted of crimes against humanity, Habre found ways to evade spending even one day in prison.
Mengistu Haile Mariam was chairman of the Derg, the socialist military junta that governed Ethiopia from 1977 to 1987. The Derg took power after the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, marking the end of the Solomonic dynasty which had ruled Ethiopia since the 13th century. Selassie was strangled in 1975 and Mengistu has denied rumors that he smothered the Emperor using a pillowcase.
Mengistu has head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991. He was president of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) from 1987 to 1991.
Mengistu purged rivals for power from the Derg and made himself dictator of Ethiopia. His bloody consolidation of power in 1977–78 is known as the Ethiopian Red Terror. Amnesty International estimates that up to 500,000 people were killed during the Ethiopian Red Terror.
Internal rebellion forced Mengistu to flee to Zimbabwe in May 1991 where he still lives, despite an Ethiopian court verdict which found him guilty in absentia of genocide. Mengistu’s government is estimated to be responsible for the deaths of 500,000 to 2,000,000 Ethiopians, mostly during the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.
Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir was the seventh head of state of Sudan under various titles from 1989 until 2019, when he was deposed in a coup d’état. In March 2009, al-Bashir became the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on March 4, 2009 on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. The Sudanese government did not recognize either the warrant or the court and Al-Bashir remains at large.
The indictments say that al-Bashir he is “suspected of being criminally responsible, as an indirect co-perpetrator.” The court’s decision failure to hold al-Bashir directly responsible was opposed by the African Union, Arab League and Non-Aligned Movement as well as the governments of Libya, Somalia, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, South Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and the Netherlands.
Guatemala’s dictator Efrain Rios Montt came to power in a coup in 1982, and within three months, an estimated 10,000 people were slaughtered. He was deposed after 17 months in power, replaced by his defense minister, General Óscar Mejía Victores.
Thirty years later, in 2013, Montt was convicted of genocide in a Guatemalan court. The verdict was annulled on a technicality, and Montt died before a retrial was completed.
Montt ruled during one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running Guatemalan Civil War. His counter-insurgency strategies significantly weakened the Marxist guerrillas organized under the umbrella of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity.
In 1977, the Carter administration suspended aid to Guatemala because of human rights violations. But in 1981, after President Reagan’s election, Montt’s opposition to Marxist guerillas won his government support in the form of $4 million in helicopter spare parts and $6.3 million in additional military supplies, to be shipped in 1982 and 1983.
Reagan called Montt “a man of great personal integrity and commitment… I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”
Israel, which had been supplying arms to Guatemala since 1974, continued its aid provisions during Montt’s government.
The International Criminal Court has opened investigations in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Darfur, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Libya, Uganda, Bangladesh/Myanmar, Palestine and Venezuela.[1] Additionally, the Office of the Prosecutor conducted preliminary examinations in situations in Bolivia, Colombia, Guinea, Iraq / the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Georgia, Honduras, South Korea, Ukraine and Venezuela.
The Court’s Pre-Trial Chambers publicly indicted 50 people. Proceedings against 20 are ongoing: 14 are at large as fugitives, one is the pre-trial phase and five are on trial. Proceedings against 30 have been completed: two are serving sentences, seven have finished sentences, four have been acquitted, seven have had the charges against them dismissed, three have had the charges against them withdrawn, and seven have died before the conclusion of the proceedings against them.
The International Criminal Court has opened investigations in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Darfur, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Libya, Uganda, Bangladesh/Myanmar, Palestine and Venezuela.[1] Additionally, the Office of the Prosecutor conducted preliminary examinations in situations in Bolivia, Colombia, Guinea, Iraq / the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Georgia, Honduras, South Korea, Ukraine and Venezuela.
The Court’s Pre-Trial Chambers publicly indicted 50 people. Proceedings against 20 are ongoing: 14 are at large as fugitives, one is the pre-trial phase and five are on trial. Proceedings against 30 have been completed: two are serving sentences, seven have finished sentences, four have been acquitted, seven have had the charges against them dismissed, three have had the charges against them withdrawn, and seven have died before the conclusion of the proceedings against them.
In December 2019, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court commenced an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed in Palestine by Israeli personnel or members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. The allegations include the establishing of illegal West Bank settlements and violations of the law of war by Israeli Defence Forces during the 2014 Gaza War, including claims of targeting Red Cross installations. Members of armed Palestinian organizations, including Hamas, have been accused of deliberately attacking Israeli civilians and using Palestinians as human shields. Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction on the basis that Palestine is not a sovereign state.