Trump picks the wrong fight with Pillay over ICC sanctions

When you’ve been a human rights champion your entire life, a fierce judge and just received the Nobel Peace Prize, you are not going to back down from a fight – no matter who the opponent.

That’s exactly what Navi Pillay, winner of last week’s prestigious prize, did this week as she hit back at US President Donald Trump’s “illegal” sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC), just hours after becoming the fifth South African to receive the award.

The US vowed to “cripple the rogue court’s operations”.

Pillay said: “He [Trump] should call in his advisors to tell him why we say that it is unlawful for him to interfere with an independent international court.”

The 85-year-old former United Nations human rights commissioner also questioned how Trump had vowed to “dismantle the court brick-by-brick” after an arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged crimes in Gaza was issued, while previous US administrations had welcomed an ICC arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

She said: “You can’t selectively pursue one lot of people and not the other. It will be such a bad, dangerous precedent.”

It looks like the American president has picked a fight with the wrong person – someone who knows international law inside out and is prepared to die fighting to defend it.