Eritrea Asks If UN Can Bribe Its Officials For Info But Gets No Hearing, Unlike DPRK

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 18 -- Months after the UN Security Council imposed more sanctions on Eritrea without arranging for its president to address the Council before the new resolution was finalized, "in blue," Eritrea's Mission to the UN has for what it's worth raised questions about the Sanctions Committee's sourcing.

  If this were being reported elsewhere, Inner City Press might not. But at the UN a silence surrounds the treatment of Eritrea. The simultaneous meeting of the North Korea Sanctions Committee drew much interest though that committee's chair said very little afterwards, declining even to confirm that Japan has submitted a list of new sanctions targets.

  Meanwhile Eritrea could not get such coverage of its defense to its (and Somalia's) sanctions committee. And so we run this quote:

The vitriol that the Monitoring Group routinely produces against Eritrea emanates, by its own admissions, from four principal sources:

i) Foreign law enforcement agencies; this begs the question on who these agencies are? Why are their testimonies accepted without checking the ulterior agendas that they may harbor? Do we have assurances that testimonies from intelligence agencies that have hostile agendas against Eritrea are excluded or meticulously corroborated with accounts of other neutral and credible bodies?

ii) The second category of sources of the Monitoring Group is 'former Eritrean military or diplomatic officials.' Again, what are the assurances that testimonies of elements who may be fugitives from the law or who may be involved in subversive activities against the country are credible and not politically motivated fabrications?

iii) The third sources are "active Eritrean Government contacts". This provokes other deeper questions. Is it lawful for the Monitoring Group to foster clandestine contacts with Eritrean officials? What are the financial or other inducements? And can testimonies of this type be considered valid?

  These strike us as good questions, and should be answered. Watch this site.