By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 4 -- After video showing UN peacekeepers from Uruguay sexually abusing 18 year old Johnny Jean in Haiti surfaced, including unedited on a Uruguayan web site, that country's Minister of Defense Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro has announced five peacekeepers and their commander will be repatriated, sent back home.
This action by the troop contributing country itself came two weeks after the UN and its MINUSTAH mission told Inner City Press that an investigation had found no wrongdoing.
In fact, it is now reported that the UN "investigation" concluded despite the video footage that no violation occurred, only a joke (un broma) --
"Una investigación preliminar de las Naciones Unidas determinó que el video, pese a vulnerar varios reglamentos de la Misión de Estabilización para Haití de la ONU (Minustah), no registraba en realidad una violación sino una broma pesada llevada a cabo por los militares." (Translation of full article here.)
Even when it is the UN which sends its peacekeepers home, the UN does not follow up to see if any discipline is imposed or even a trial held.
Only last week when Inner City Press asked about 16 peacekeepers from Benin who were repatriated from Cote d'Ivoire after being show to have bought sex from underaged girls for food, new UN deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey said that Benin has not told the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) what if anything has been done with the peacekeepers.
DPKO on September 2 got a new chief, French official Herve Ladsous. As regards Haiti, further review has revealed that Hadsous was France's charge d'affaires in the country, and defended the coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the extent of justifying the involvement of Dominique de Villepins' sister Veronique Albanel, which Aristide sought to sue in French court.
Since the African Union called Aristide's removal unconstitutional and UN Peacekeeping and DPKO work mostly in African, often with the AU, some now wonder about the wisdom of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon handing the top DPKO post to a French official linked among other things to the deposing of Aristide. Watch this site.
