Photo: Brian Ngugi/IPS

Kenya's new President Uhuru Kenyatta after he was sworn in at the Moi International Sports Centre on April 9.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague has been accused severally of being biased towards Africa. Since the inception of the ICC about a decade ago, only Africans have been subjects of its investigations and prosecutions, as if human rights violations and crimes against humanity are perpetrated exclusively in Africa or by Africans alone.

ICC had earlier indicted the Sudan's president AlBashir and even issued a warrant of arrest for him -- a sitting president! This is even as the Sudan is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that set up the ICC. Like the US, therefore, the Sudan does not recognize the ICC and so wouldn't have been subjected to any ICC jurisdiction. ICC has prosecuted Charles Taylor of Liberia and is currently prosecuting Laurence Gbagbo of Cote d'Ivoire.

What these leaders have in common is their opposition to imperialist designs in their respective countries. Taylor became Liberian president despite the opposition of the US. Ellen Sirleaf, the current US-backed Liberian president, may never be fully in control as long as Taylor is free, hence his sentence. Gbagbo did not succumb to French machinations, hence he had to be overthrown by French troops for Alassan Ouattara to become president AlBashir is radically anti-imperialist.

The new ICC agenda in Africa is in Kenya but the Kenyans ignored ICC and voted overwhelmingly for President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy in the last election, as if daring the ICC to do its worst. The verdict of Kenyans is a clear indication that the ICC manipulations and interference in purely African issues cannot continue. In Africa we have our own methods of dispute settlements and the white imperialists have to recognize that. In fact, the ICC and the West's partisan indictment partly made Uhuru Kenyatta's victory possible in Kenya two months ago.

Below is what Ambassador Kacharia Kamau, Kenya's new UN permanent representative, wrote; entitled "Kenya's Interests and the ICC", it is very apt:

"My recent communication to the UN Security Council, requesting the cessation of weak-and-weakening cases against Kenyan officials by the International Criminal Court, has caused considerable public commentary. What has been missing in the commentary is an understanding of the issue from the perspective of the Kenyan state, both as an embodiment of the will of its people and as a co-equal participant in international relations. I was not making a defence of the ICC inductees, but instead was representing the interests of the state I serve.

"In the free and fair democratic elections of March of this year, the principals - the president and the deputy president - were entrusted with executing the will of 40m Kenyans. In pursuit of the Kenyan people's domestic and international interests, state officials (under the direction of the principals) deal with multiple institutions whose work affects the ICC and in which the Kenyan state is an active member. When matters of the ICC arise, are those officials to pull back from vigorously pursuing their responsibilities because there is a perception that they represent only the principals' personal interest? Certainly not.

"The Kenyan state is not on trial at the ICC despite the prosecutor's continuous use of a media bullhorn to try and erase the important distinction between the inductees and Kenya's state institutions. The state has an obligation to ensure that it operates from the strongest possible position, defending itself from foreign intimidation and manipulation, from attacks on its credibility and prestige as well as any attempts to curtail its full participation in the community of nations.

"These are matters of national priority and security that Kenya cannot afford to neglect even as it busies itself in furthering its democratic gains and implementing a new constitution. If, as is the case this month, the UN Security Council has a debate on the functioning of international tribunals and courts, Kenya must participate on the same footing as other states and advance the nation's interest without self-censure. My critique of the ICC prosecution of Kenyan state officials is legitimate, and cannot be dismissed as carrying water for the president and deputy president. And the fact is that my observations of the prosecutions are not frivolous.

There is overwhelming and mounting evidence that the cases are frail. The prosecution has had repeated censure from the ICC judges. It has even, by its own admission, used witnesses who are on record confirming they were coached to lie. With increasing frequency, witnesses are dropping out and the prosecution's only response is to make vague and unsubstantiated public attacks on the integrity of the accused.

"These irregularities should give pause to any individual or institution concerned with due process. That the prosecution has continued to pursue the cases despite their evident weakness only gives credence to suspicions, both in Kenya and abroad, that the prosecution is using the cases in questionable faith to sustain the relevance of a failing institution.

"It is a matter of dismal record that the prosecution has only managed one conviction in a decade, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. That all its indictees have been Africans, at a time when there have been multiple conflicts outside Africa leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths at the hands of repressive and oppressive state actors, indicates strongly that the prosecution lacks true legitimacy in the international community. The gap between its duty and its performance widens when we note that Kenyans made a sovereign electoral choice incompatible with the continuation of prosecutions that are purported to benefit them.

"The prosecutions are not only grave attacks on persons but are also political in their effect of undermining the will of the people. Can the ICC still be said to be safeguarding the political rights of Kenyan people - their freedom and democracy - when the cases threaten to consume the time and effort that the people of Kenya have tasked the principals with to improve their lives?

"It is therefore only reasonable that, as a representative of Kenya, I should request the international community to consider ending this damaging diversion of energies.

"This is not to attack the ideals and the aspirations of the ICC, but certainly the project as currently undertaken is not working and will not work without a sober and concerted effort of the international community to revisit its fundamentals. In the meantime, the main purposes of the ICC seem to be to advance the career interests of a handful of jurists and academics, and to enrich international law jurisprudence. I can see no reason to sacrifice the interests of the Kenyan people to such vain ends.

"Finally, it should never be forgotten that the death of 1,133 Kenyans and the displacement of 650,000 others remains a deep wound of concern on the Kenyan psyche. For anyone to suggest otherwise is disingenuous and untrue. Kenyans fear nothing more than a repeat of the 2008 events, and the 2013 elections, peaceful, restrained, free, fair and universally acclaimed, bear testament to that fact. As a founding member state and co-author of the ICC and the Rome Statute respectively, Kenya wants to see the ICC succeed by competently and fairly pursuing cases with merit.

Few of the state parties that established the court expected that the Office of the Prosecutor would fail so dismally in its duty. There is little doubt that the bungling prosecution of the cases against Kenya's president and deputy president has fallen far short of reasonable standards and besmirched the reputation of an institution sorely needed by the world. It is time to end the charade and allow Kenya to get on with the urgent work of its own development."

Ambassador Kamau sits on the advisory board of IC Publications. He wrote this opinion piece in a personal capacity. He heads the Kenya Mission to the UN in New York.