23 May 2012
abc.net.au
Australia should not be a war criminal 'refuge'
David Donaldson

This month, Jacques Mungwarere is on trial in Ottawa for war crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994.

Now 40, he faces four charges under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, including murder, sexual violence and physical and psychological aggression in an intentional campaign of genocide.

Although the court does not offer any details as to what the charges specifically relate to, Mungwarere was living in Kibuye at the time of the Rwandan genocide, a town where 2,000 Tutsi women and children were locked in a church that was then bulldozed. It is believed that a total of 800,000 people were killed over the course of the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide.

If found guilty, he will be the second person to be found guilty of war crimes in Canada. Désiré Munyaneza, another Rwandan-Canadian, was the first. He was convicted in 2009 on seven counts of genocide.

Twelve years ago, Canada passed the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which allows for the prosecution of people in Canada who are believed to have committed war crimes overseas.

In Australia, however, nobody has been convicted of war crimes since the post-World War II trials of Japanese military personnel, which concluded in 1951. Apart from crimes committed during World War II, suspects in Australia cannot be tried for war crimes committed before 2002, the year the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into force.

This means that those who could otherwise be found guilty of war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity that occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans or East Timor cannot be prosecuted in Australia.

Although the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's War Crimes Screening Unit has previously rejected more than 3,000 visa applications on the basis that there was significant evidence to suggest culpability in war crimes, there are still undoubtedly war criminals living in Australia. There have been several high-profile, failed attempts over the years to extradite alleged World War II and Balkan war criminals, including Charles Zentai, Konrad Kalejs and Dragan Vasiljkovic.

And it is likely there are other war criminals living in Australia from the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, East Timor, Somalia and Rwanda, among others. One problem is that, as Canada's well funded war crimes unit has found, war criminals often enter the country as refugees. They tend to come from conflict-torn regions where reliable information can be hard to come by, and often plausibly lack vital documents. Given the constraints, it is no wonder that some slip through the net.

But when war criminals do manage to get into the country, Australia hasn't historically done very much to prosecute or extradite them. Indeed, Australia has been described by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an NGO dedicated to pursuing Nazis, as "the only major Western country of refuge" for Nazi war criminals.

Australia has, however, been incredibly supportive of international courts. According to a report by the Lowy Institute, in 2008 alone, Australia gave $15.7 million to international courts and tribunals. But the Rome Statute affirms that states have the first responsibility and right to prosecute international crimes- the International Criminal Court is only designed to take action where national legal systems fail to do so. As a supporter of international justice, Australia must do its bit to deny safe haven for war criminals.

For this reason, the Government should consider reform to allow the prosecution of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed before 2002, as well as looking at ways of making the extradition process more effective. A dedicated war crimes unit should be created within the AFP to investigate the scale of the problem in Australia, and the government should strengthen ties with the International Criminal Court and likeminded states to improve information sharing on war crimes suspects.

Given Australia's slack track record when it comes to dealing with war criminals, we need to make more of an effort to ensure that justice is served on those who commit these horrific crimes.

abc.net.au