At UN, Doubts on Journalist Protection from Darfur to Prageeth, As Sarkozy Sues?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 3 -- There was much talk at the UN Thursday about protecting journalists, but a seeming lack of action, from UN Peacekeeping mission like that in Darfur actively undermining media Khartoum doesn't like to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon not following up on petitions about disappeared journalists like Prageeth Eknelygoda in Sri Lanka.

  At a French and Greek sponsored event on the fifth anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1738 regarding the protection of journalists in armed conflict, Inner City Press asked without answer about Prageeth, and about the UNAMID mission and its stance on Radio Dabanga.

  The Sri Lanka and Prageeth question, even now in the news, was not answered by anyone on the first panel. 

  Inner City Press directed the Darfur question to French Deputy Martin Briens, replacing Permanent Representative Gerard Araud on the panel. 

 Araud, it should be noted, hit a new low in the number of open question and answer stakeouts with journalists while President of the Security Council in May 2011; his President Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening to sue Mediapart for reporting on his funding from Gaddafi. No amount of high-life partying can legitimately make up for this.

  Araud's deputy Briens did not answer, on the World Press Freedom Day panel. Finally the moderator re-asked Briens directly. He said that the Security Council could cite 1738 more often, and set up a committee.

  But if an envoy like Ibrahim Gambari doesn't like or protect a media like Radio Dabanga, what will the Security Council or Secretary General do?

  Ban Ki-moon, so beholden to Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa that he yelled at his own staff in front of the Sri Lankan delegation, seems to have done nothing to follow up on Pragath's disappearance, among others. 

 

  In the audience there was talk not only of Occupy Wall Street but also of a former UN press officer, Kanak Dixit, who is being harassed in Nepal. Ban Ki-moon was asked to raise the issue but has not; his focus in Nepal seems to be on a development called Lumbini.

  Tellingly in his recent trip to Myanmar -- which beyond domestic repression killed a Japanese photo journalist in 2007 -- Ban Ki-moon boosted a business which sells surveillance technology, including to Gaddafi's Libya. Protecting journalists, indeed. Watch this site.

Update of 6:05 pm -- CPJ raised NATO's bombing of Libyan state television; Inner City Press asked about Ban Ki-moon saying NATO fully complying with international law and the resolutions of the Security Council, which has refused to probe the TV bombing. By then, France's Briens had left the podium but not the room. And so it goes at the UN.