By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 17 -- This year the death of 22 UN staff in Iraq on August 19, 2003 was marked by the filming of a Beyonce video in the General Assembly Hall, and a ceremony with new Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson in the GA lobby.
Then outside the UN, on the other side of First Avenue in the Church Center, survivors held their own quiet service. They spoke of being excluded by the UN, of the investigation of the killings being called off or covered up.
One speaker recounted asking Kofi Annan why he hadn't acted on warning prior to the bombing of the Canal Hotel: the killing of an Iraq driver and a Filipino staffer, a sermon on Mosul calling for attacks on the IOM and UN.
It was said that Annan's successor as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had said he would do better but hasn't. Ironies were inescapable: Ban named Annan as envoy to Syria.
After Annan quit, Ban today named Lakhdar Brahimi, who was assigned to report on, or some say cover up, the bombing of UN staff in his native Algeria.
The survivors in the Church Center praised Hedi Annabi, for having come to previous remembrances before he himself was killed in rubble during the Haiti earthquake.
To their credit they cited subsequent UN staff victims, in not only in Haiti and Algiers but also Afghanistan. One wanted to ask what they thought of the UN's failure to follow up on the murder of UN staff member Louis Maxwell, defending his colleagues in Afghanistan, but held off due to decorum. Click here for Inner City Presscoverage of Louis Maxwell.
On Friday a speaker about the Canal Hotel bombing was dismissive of the 16 page report by Martti Ahtisaari -- another candidate for the Syria envoy post -- and of one delivered in 2008 as a "UN" report but written entirely by the US.
More than one speaker questioned why the "one witness" to how the bombing was done was turned over to Iraqi authorities by the US and killed by hanging before anyone in the UN interviewed him.
Inner City Press has previously questioned the lack of finality in the UN's investigation of the Canal Hotel bombing. Click here for that and watch this site.
