(Johannesburg) The possible visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin next August is far from unanimous in South Africa, while many are calling for his “arrest” as soon as he arrives in the country.
Digital billboards along a South African highway in Centurion urge President Cyril Ramaphosa to ‘arrest’ Vladimir Putin.
Pretoria faces a diplomatic dilemma if the Russian leader attends the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Johannesburg in August, as the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant to his place.
PHOTO LUCA SOLA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
One of the digital billboards calling for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin in South Africa
The Avaaz organization is behind the advertising campaign.
The opposition mobilized
The main opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance (DA), meanwhile asked the courts for “an order” requiring the arrest of the Russian president.
The ICC, based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant in March against Vladimir Putin for the war crime of “deporting” Ukrainian children as part of Moscow’s offensive against Ukraine.
Since South Africa is a member of the ICC, it is theoretically supposed to arrest the Russian president upon his arrival in the country.
But Pretoria, which maintains close diplomatic relations with Moscow and insists on its “neutrality” in the conflict in Ukraine, has not yet indicated whether it will do so.
The DA explains that it has launched a “preventive” judicial request to ensure that the government “respects its obligations” and hands over Mr. Putin to the ICC in the event of his coming to South Africa. No “judicial ambiguity” should persist, says its press release.
Kremlin spokesman Boris Peskov contented himself with saying on Tuesday that Russia would be “duly represented” at the Brics summit, without specifying whether Mr. Putin intended to go there.
Moscow “assumes, of course” that its BRICS partners will “not be guided” by “illegitimate decisions”, namely the ICC arrest warrant, he added.
The DA’s legal action comes as the government granted diplomatic immunity to officials attending a meeting of BRICS foreign ministers this week and then the heads of state summit in August.
Some read the decision as a preparatory step to provide legal cover for Putin’s visit, but Pretoria says it is standard procedure for organizing international conferences.
“These immunities do not cancel an arrest warrant issued by an international tribunal against any participant in the conference”, defended the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday morning.
South Africa has been criticized since the start of the war in Ukraine for its proximity to Moscow. In April, Mr. Ramaphosa felt that the ICC’s arrest warrant against Mr. Putin put South Africa “in the way”.