By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, January 26 -- Should UN officials be allowed to declare war
anonymously?
Today
Reuters from the UN in New York runs a quote that "'It is not
simply peacekeeping, this is peace enforcement. It's a much more
robust stance,' said the official, who declined to be named."
Why
did Reuters accept this request for anonymity from a UN official on a
concept -- "peace enforcement" -- that not all UN member
states, particularly troop contributing countries, have agreed to?
BBC
has the same blind quotes, without explaining or even mentioning that
the UN official declined to be named.
Agence France Presse goes further, or lower, allowing a
"second UN official" to also go unnamed.
After
the UN failed in the Democratic Republic of Congo to protect
civilians first in Goma then in Minova, where the DRC Army raped at
least 126 women in late November 2012, a reserve spin war began.
UN
Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous refused to answer Press questions
about the Minova rapes, instead taking favored and compliant media
out into the hall for a private briefing. Video here. These media
included Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Voice of America.
Now
it's gotten worse. On January 25, 2013 AFP, Reuters and the BBC at the UN
allowed an "unnamed UN official" to essentially declare war
in the Congo.
Why grant anonymity? Is this a whistleblower? Or a
failing UN official?
On
the media, what are the policies on granting anonymity in cases like
this for Reuters editors like Stephen J. Adler, Walden Siew, and Paul
Ingrassia, for Agence France Presse, for BBC?
In terms of the UN, isn't
this "inter-governmental organization" owned and supposedly by its member states? Many of them, particularly troop
contributing countries, have not agreed to Ladsous' "peace
enforcement" push, nor in the C-34 committee on peacekeeping
have they signed off on his proposal to use drones.
But
Ladsous, Inner City Press yesterday reported, ran a procurement for
drones from November 28, 2012 to January 11, 2013, before he had any
approval at all.
Another UN official in the mix is Susana
Malcorra, sent to the region as the Personal Envoy of Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon. But Malcorra promised to be more transparent, after defending the UN's blacking out of material about war crimes. We'll see.
What
right do high UN official have to declare war anonymously? And why
do AFP, Reuters and the BBC serve as pass throughs in this way?
Of
note in this is the role of the decaying UN Correspondents
Association. When Ladsous became the last minute replacement for
Jerome Bonnafont as France's official to succeed their own Alain Le
Roy atop UN Peacekeeping and Inner City Press reported it, AFP's Tim
Witcher launched a process in UNCA to "take action" against
Inner City Press.
He, the BBC reporter and Reuters are all on the
Executive Committee on UNCA, two elected without any competition
after their terms expired.
Ultimately
he and Louis Charbonneau of Reuters supported Voice of America's June
20, 2012 request to the UN that Inner City Press accreditation be
"reviewed."
This led the New York Civil Liberties Union to ask public questions about due process for independent journalists at the UN, questions that the UN has yet to answer.
Then in December 2012 when Ladsous went so far
as to have his spokesman seize the UNTV microphone so Inner City
Press could not ask Ladsous a question about the now 126 rapes in Minova by the UN's partners in the Congolese Army, UNCA did
nothing. Video here.
UN
official Stephane Dujarric claims he told Ladsous' spokesman not to
do it again -- but never told anyone until a January 17 meeting when
he and another UN official, Peter
Launsky-Tieffenthal (we name
officials) were Pressed by the new Free UN Coalition for Access on the UN's further decline in transparency.
But
now this UN machinery and its embedded press allow a UN official to
declare war anonymously. A new low has been reached. Could they go
lower? Watch this site.
