By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- As protests continue in Egypt, even in New York Egypt's Mission to the UN is guarded by police, some brought down from The Bronx. Inside an otherwise empty UN, Inner City Press fields messages from the Egyptian diaspora responding to its reporting earlier on Saturday, some pointing to UN system complicity in Mubarak's repression.
Take for example the UN Development Program's work with Egypt's police, called BENAA, founded by Murabak's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to a UNDP website yet to be taken down as some have been, “media and Civil Society Organizations have been targeted, including the crucial group of university students.”
But a Wikileaked US embassy cable in a non-highlighted portion admits that
“NGO contacts have privately criticized the UNDP project as ineffective, complaining that it has banned credible human [rights] lawyers from giving lectures to the police because of their political opposition to the NDP, and instead invites MOI officials complicit in torture to give human rights presentations.”
So the UN system in Egypt “BANned credible human lawyers from giving lectures to the police because of their political opposition to the NDP, and instead invites MOI officials complicit in torture.”
No wonder then that BAN Ki-moon is so silent on whether Mubarak's 30 year emergency law allowing censorship should be eliminated.
Egypt UN Mission Jan 29, 9 pm, cops from 50th Precinct, (c) MRLee
UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, notably, was in Yemen earlier this month praising the government, as if the protests there and in Tunisia and elsewhere were not taking place.
There is more to be said about the UN's system's work including with BENAA, which lists as supporters the Ford Foundation, EU and members and others. Watch this site.
