A charge of genocide has been laid against Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) head Zackie Achmat at the International Criminal Court, the Cape Argus reported on Thursday.
In the 59-page criminal complaint in the court in The Hague in The Netherlands, Achmat is accused of promoting the provision and use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to treat HIV.
The charge was laid by Cape Town advocate Anthony Brink of the Treatment Information Group (TIG).
The action is seen as the latest attack in the long-running battle between the TAC and its arch-rivals, who vehemently oppose the use of ARVs.
Brink admitted that he received funding from a foundation set up by the controversial Dr Matthias Rath, who favours vitamins for the treatment of Aids.
The TAC has been at the forefront of the battle to get the government to provide the drugs to HIV-positive people.
In his complaint, Brink calls on the court to charge and find Achmat ”guilty of genocide — the most serious crime of concern to the international community as a whole”.
He alleges that Achmat has played a ”direct criminal role in the deaths of thousands of South Africans from poisoning from so-called antiretroviral drugs”.
He told the Cape Argus on Thursday: ”Recent research data cited in the complaint [submitted at The Hague] demonstrates [ARVs] are killing thousands of people in South Africa — mostly black and mostly poor.
”TAC leader Zackie Achmat correctly claims personal responsibility for getting these drugs into the public health system, and, accordingly, is personally criminally culpable for the deadly consequences.”
Brink has asked the court to impose the harshest sentence on him — ”permanent confinement in a small, white steel-and-concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him”. — Sapa