By Matthew Russell Lee
UNdisclosed Location, March 22 -- There are 43 UN personnel detained around the world, the UN Staff Union reminded member states on Friday, calling on them to “sign and ratify the Convention of the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel, as well as its Optional Protocol.”
That would be a good step. But it must also be noted that the UN Secretariat under Ban Ki-moon has remained silent in some instances where UN staff, particularly national staff, have been detained and subjected to kangaroo court proceedings.
In some cases, UN staff are killed and the UN stops following up, as has happened on the murder of UN Security's Louis Maxwell by Afghan National Forces. The host country -- that is, the Karzai government -- views the case as closed, UN Envoy Jan Kubis recently told Inner City Press. Video here.
And Kubis is one of the better UN envoys. Others just say nothing, or wink and nod.
When Tamil national staff of the UN in Sri Lanka was locked up by the Rapapaksa government there, the UN said almost nothing. In May 2009 while in Colombo, Inner City Press asked the UN Country Team, which made multiple excuses.
This happened again in Ethiopia, as Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky about on June 22, 2012, after Abdulrahman Sheikh Hassan was sentenced to seven years in prison for “terrorism” for meeting with the Ogaden Liberation Front.
When Ban went to Ethiopia, did he raise this? Some find the UN Staff Union press release today, almost identical to that used in previous years, as strangely non-responsive to the union-wide No Confidence in Ban Ki-moon vote taken after Ban called his opponents “selfish.” Watch this site.
