On Monday 15th April, the Dutch Embassy and Time magazine partnered to co-organise a screening at the Frontline Club of Peace vs Justice: a documentary about the violence of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), particularly against children, in northern Uganda. An expert panel discussion followed.

Klaartje Quirijns (left), Geoffrey Robertson (centre left), Matthew McAllester (centre right), Mugambi Kiai (right)       Photo: Jim Treadway

Directed by Klaartje Quirijns, Peace vs. Justice explores how to find justice for Kony, and peace for Uganda, where three million people have been victimized by the LRA, either directly or indirectly, according to the film’s closing credits.

If Kony is captured  (one hundred U.S. Special Operations troops were dispatched toward this end in Central Africa last year ), the film asks: should his crimes be placed solely into the hands of local justice in Uganda?  “The people I met in northern Uganda…actually most people…will say that,” Quirijns told the audience.

The movie highlights however that Ugandans have failed to achieve peace with the LRA for over two decades.

Many hope to see Kony tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands, yet panelist and British barrister Courtenay Griffiths was sceptical:

“If you look at virtually every situation in which the ICC are involved, you can see certain Western interests at play. And what you have to realize is that the language of human rights, and humanitarian intervention, has now become a fig leaf behind which powerful Western countries can intervene around the world to protect their own, particularly economic, interests.”

Courtney Griffiths (left), Barney Afako (centre), Klaartje Quirijns (right) Photo: Jim Treadway

Was Griffiths right to doubt the ICC’s intentions? asked moderator Matthew McAllester.

“No,” human rights lawyer and fellow panelist Geoffrey Robertson affirmed. The ICC has brought both hope and fear that war crimes will not be tolerated, he emphasized.

“You can’t say it’s a neocolonial court,” he added.  “Yes, we won’t probably get [Tony] Blair.  Although Dr. Kissinger’s travel plans are very curtailed. So are George Bush’s. There are a lot of places they can’t go to. Why? Because of international justice.”

Finally, Mugambi Kiai, a professional advocate for accountability in African governance, demanded a change in the conversation about Kony, Uganda, and the ICC:

“When is it that we stop looking at the ICC as a panacea? As the vehicle through which we get justice? …  Where are the domestic remedies that we so need? [In Kenya,] we’ve been told: we’ve got a new judiciary, we’ve got a new constitution. That’s all hogwash!

They’re not doing enough to transform the political conversation that transforms all of these historical injustices into good governance, into a political method that respects rights, respects values, respects dignity. That is not the conversation that’s going on, and that’s a tragedy.”

 

You can watch the discussion below:

With access to Dr Henry Kissinger over the past two years, this award-winning documentary gives unique insight into the personality and motivation of one of America’s most powerful  and controversial  international statesman.
 
Film maker Adrian Pennink intercuts twenty hours  of interview with Dr Kissinger by Niall Ferguson, with archive and contemporaneous telephone conversations between him and President Nixon, to recount the extraordinary and violent events of their time in power during the 1970s.
 
Best remembered for negotiating peace with Vietnam, opening up China to the West and creating détente with Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, Kissinger also stands accused of illegally bombing Cambodia, aiding Pinochet’s coup against the elected President of Chile, Salvatore Allende, and arming the Indonesians so they could invade East Timor.
 
But this film is no mea culpa. Kissinger stands resolutely by his historic decisions as he recounts the fulcrum in which they were made.  When controversial questions are asked or he fears how his response will seem, he asks the camera to stop, and it obeys. But there are moments when his control slips, as he recounts his wartime arrival at a concentration camp, the fall of South Vietnam. All in all an intriguing portrait of an international leviathan, who doesn’t dispute he’ll be as much remembered for saying that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac as winning the Nobel  Peace Prize.
 
Kissinger will be screening at the Frontline Club on the 3rd of October, followed by a Q&A with Producer Melanie Fall and Director Adrian Pennink. To book click here.