cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24014988
This summer Kimberly Prost, a Canadian judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrived at her home in The Hague and, as was her habit, called out “Alexa”.
There was silence. The voice-activated assistant did not respond. “Alexa was dead. She wouldn’t talk to me,” Prost recalled in an interview with The Irish Times.
Prost had been added to the United States’ sanctions list, because in 2020 she ruled to authorise an investigation into possible atrocities in Afghanistan, including by US troops. Amazon, obliged to implement the sanctions as a US company, had cancelled her account.
It was just the start of what Prost describes as a “pervasive, negative effect” of the sanctions across all aspects of her life, which has shut her out from much of the international banking system.
…
“The purpose is clear. They have said, basically, we’re imposing these sanctions because of decisions you’ve taken in your role as a judge. So effectively, they are interfering directly with the independence of a judge,” Prost said.
“I can’t think of any other way to describe it but an attack on the independence of the judiciary and the International Criminal Court’s independence as an institution, which is why I’m so interested in the public hearing this.”
USA is a rogue state, the fact that they do these things administratively is complete disregard for human rights and complete disregard for the concept of operating within the law.
It is yet another example of how USA does not respect civil rights of people of other nations, and they don’t respect the sovereignty even of “allied” countries.
It’s disgusting, and it has infuriated me for decades how we in for instance Europe has allowed USA to do this, without as much as criticism.
There is no way it can be considered acceptable that USA can apply pressure on what a judge of a sovereign country or international organization decides. Not a judge or any politician or public servant or any private citizen for that matter.
But the fact that USA has the audacity to go after ICC judges, shows the extreme level of entitlement and exceptionalism USA feel they have in the world.
USA MUST be treated as a rogue nation, and we can’t allow them to continue. If Amazon does this, we need to ban Amazon in EU.
And fuck all the idiots that use Amazon cloud services, you should get the fuck away from American services already. It’s been crystal clear obvious that they operate illegally according to EU law at least since Obama was president!
Why the fuck are people still using their crap!