Opinion: Survey shows Muslim support for indictment of Sudan president

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A WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of residents in seven Muslim countries found a surprising degree of public sentiment in favor of the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Ahmad al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his actions in Darfur.

While the African Union, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference rejected the indictment and refused to arrest the president if he ever visited one of their countries (part of the condition of the indictment was that Bashir be arrested if he left Sudan), the leaders of such organizations may not reflect the view at the grass roots, said Stephen Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org:

This suggests that leaders of some majority-Muslim and African nations, in denouncing the indictment of President Bashir, are out of step with their people.
In the countries where a plurality of those surveyed approved of the indictment, the support wasn’t necessarily overwhelming. Only in Kenya and Nigeria was the approval rate more than 70 percent. In Turkey the result was 51 percent in favor and 22 percent against, and in Pakistan it was 39 percent to 32 percent. Meanwhile, respondents in Egypt and Iraq disapproved by a narrow margin. Only in the Palestinian Territories did respondents overwhelmingly oppose the ICC’s action

After the ICC announced the indictment of Bashir in March 2009, the African Union opened fire against the court, saying that it seeks punishment only against the African continent. African leaders also asked why their countries were so often in the ICC’s cross-hairs. Bashir argued that the indictment was purely political, and pushed out foreign aid groups after the March announcement. In fact, at this month’s African Union summit, the leaders again rejected ICC’s call for Bashir’s arrest and Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi said the ICC represented ‘new world terrorism.’

Such harsh reaction makes this poll’s results all the more surprising, as residents of the African nations were found to be the ones most in favor of the indictment. Surveys like this make me doubt the representativeness and multilateral nature of such organizations as the African Union and the Arab League, whose purpose is to accurately represent the needs and sentiments of their people.

Read the poll here.

--Catherine Lyons