Right. This post is going to be rattled off very hastily because there is so much I could write about at present and I have fallen a bit behind. So let me say something about Belarus, Georgia and Iran in brief succession.
Belarus and the International Criminal Court
Lithuania submitted a request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the regime of Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka for crimes against humanity. The ICC is empowered to prosecute individuals for one of four atrocity crimes – genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. The Lithuanian submission claims that since 2020 Belarus has 'waged a campaign' of 'deportation, persecution and other inhumane acts' against Belarusian citizens and that these amount to crimes against humanity. Sounds reasonable enough.
The ICC has acknowledged receipt of the referral and will undertake preliminary investigations to determine whether to open a formal case. While Belarus is not a party to the ICC, the referral to the court notes that some of the alleged crimes have taken place on the territory of Lithuania, a detail that prospectively brings it within the jurisdiction of the court. There are precedents for this. The ICC opened an investigation into United States soldiers for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, despite the US not being a signatory of the ICC founding statute. (Some of the alleged US crimes against Afghans also, coincidentally, took place in Lithuania at a 'black site'. The US responded by imposing sanctions on the ICC prosecutor and, later, US military personnel were excluded from the ICC investigation. Draw your own conclusions.)
Nothing is likely to happen very soon in respect of the case against Belarusian officials but this is an issue that I'll be keeping an eye on. In the meantime, for anyone interested in the broad theme of holding autocrats responsible for alleged criminal activities, please watch the WUB Hub webinar 'Holding the Dictators to Account' that I moderated back in March of this year (see here).
Georgia: Quo vadis?
An event looming this month is Georgia's parliamentary election on 26 October. I wrote about Georgian politics in two previous posts this year. It's fair to say that my views were not entirely bien pensant: the best I can say is that the jury's out in my mind about how far Russia is responsible for recent developments in Georgia.