By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 20 -- The UN moved Charles Petrie from Somalia to Burundi in April of this year, and now on November 1 he is leaving the employ of the UN.
On October 19, Inner City Press asked the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acting Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq why Petrie is leaving. He is not being thrown out of the country, Haq said. “Clearly, he has been talking about this, and so, you could get the answer just as easily from Mr. Petrie. I wouldn’t have any way of adding to his own comments.”
But a September 30 resignation letter from Petrie to Ban Ki-moon, obtained elsewhere in New York by Inner City Press, shows that Petrie is choosing to leave the whole UN system, due to the UN's inaction on genocidaire Callixte Mbarushimana, and that while he will now work part time on Somalia, it will not be through the UN, but on behalf of European donors.
For a UN official to leave the UN system due to its failure to act on a genocidaire who worked for the UN is news -- which may be why Ban Ki-moon's Spokesperson's Office has refused to say anything. Back on October 11, Inner City Press asked
Inner City Press: does the UN have any comment on the arrest in Paris of Callixte Mbarushimana?
Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: I know who you mean, and this is an ICC [International Criminal Court] arrest. We’ve seen the same press release or statement that you have on this person…
Inner City Press: He worked for the UN; I am wondering what the response…
Spokesperson Nesirky: We of course know where he worked before, and you also know the full history to that. What I can simply say is that we are aware in the same way that you are — from the media and from their press release — that the International Criminal Court has announced that this man was arrested earlier today in Paris by the French authorities following a sealed ICC arrest warrant. That’s what I can tell you.
But the UN could have said more.
The public record shows that Petrie was the UN's Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator in Rwanda at the time of the 1994 genocide. In his September 30 letter of resignation to Ban, Petrie urged
“the UN to come to terms with the case of Callixte Mbarushimana, a former staff member of UNDP (1992 - 1995 Rwanda, 1996 - 1998 Angola) and later UNMIK (2000-2001), accusing of having participated in the murder of thirty-three people at the time of Rwanda's genocide, among [them] UN colleagues. To a large part as a result of the UN's inability, or unwillingness, to initiate an investigation of the accusations that were know to it by 1996, Callixte Mbarushimana won a legal action against the UN in 2004 which resulted in the organization paying his thirteen months salary as compensation for the 'violation of his rights.'”
The UN could have addressed this, but didn't. Perhaps the “review” that Petrie's letter to Ban says he will embark on will help address this. Watch this site.
