By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 4 -- When accused drug kingping Bubo Na Tchuto was snatched off the coast of Guinea Bissau one might have expected the wires that covered it, Reuters and Agence France Presse, to note that the UN provided shelter for Bubo Na Tchuto for three months.
After all, the UN admitted putting him up, before the most recently coup. Inner City Press and the then-LUSO correspondent at the UN repeatedly asked UN envoy Mutaboba about sheltering Bubo Na Tchuto, including on UN Television.
But no. Neither wire services' stories mentioned it. Reuters, in fact, quoted the UN as get-tough on drugs.
This is no surprise: both AFP and Reuters have been willing, apparently in exchange for access or simply out of laziness, to become pass-throughs for UN officials like UN Peacekeeping's Herve Ladsous.
After four months of questions from Inner City Press about 126 rapes in Minova from November 20 to 22, 2012 by the Congolese Army which Ladsous' DPKO supports, Ladsous spun the two wires first with an ultimatum then some “assurances” that have yet to be disclosed.
But AFP's Tim Witcher and Reuters' Louis Charbonneau wrote both up with no context, making it appear that the UN was getting tough -- as now echoed by both wire services in the case of Bubo Na Tchuto of Guinea Bissau.
Witcher of AFP, working with Charbonneau's supervisee Michelle Nichols, filed pretextual complaints with UN Security, and DPI, about being called lapdogs after Witcher cut into a conversation of Inner City Press with another journalist, hissing "lies and distortion." Can one claim to feel threatened in such circumstances? The UN is a circus of censorship.
Both Witcher and Charbonneau are on the Executive Committee of UNCA, now known as the UN Censorship Alliance. To get to use the UN to raid their critics, have the two committed to write superficial articles which don't question, much less criticize, the UN? So it appears.
