Press release

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT - A BRIDGE TO: 'HUMAN BEINGS ALL EQUAL, JUST ARREST WARRANTS FOR PERPETRATORS OF CRIMES'

Rome, 21 May 2024 - "Human beings are all equal whether they are Israelis or Palestinians. If horrendous war crimes have been committed against them before, during and after 7 October, the International Criminal Court has the obligation to intervene and seek warrants for the arrest of those responsible without looking anyone in the face". This was stated in a statement by Angelica Romano and Alfio Nicotra, co-presidents of the NGO Un Ponte Per (UPP).

"The only equalization that needs to be made is on the civilian victims regardless of their gender, nationality or religious faith,' Nicotra and Romano continue. 'We find instrumental the declarations of some countries, which among other things do not adhere to the ICC, that compare Israel to Hamas, considering the former to be more legitimate than the latter to violate the most basic human rights. No one can be above the law and international law, least of all a country that proclaims itself democratic'.

"We read things that are unspeakable on a historical level," Romano and Nicotra write, "like those who consider the proposal of the Hague Prosecutor an attempt to put Truman and Hitler on the same level. They pretend not to know that the Rome Statute was created to protect all peoples, precisely so that the horrors of the Second World War could never be repeated in the name of the superiority of one people over another'.

"We would never have allowed the government in London to reduce the Catholic quarters of Belfast to ashes because the alleged 'terrorists of Ira' were acting there," the UPP co-presidents point out. "In the same way, we cannot allow, under the pretext of the fight against terrorism, the destruction of Gaza, the murder of more than 35,000 civilians, the use of hunger and thirst as an instrument of war and collective vengeance.

"It is necessary for Europe to break with colonialist ideology and all white supremacism that leads to consider Palestinian victims not as human beings deserving of equal dignity, but as necessary or collateral victims. For this reason," Nicotra and Romano conclude, "we defend the work of the Hague Criminal Prosecutor, and we demand that the Italian and European governments give their full support to protect the independence of the ICC and commit themselves to respecting its pronouncements.