By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 16 -- UN official Jeffrey Feltman's upcoming trip to Egypt, which Inner City Press first reported with exclusive audio on Thursday night, is being presented as showing the UN's response to the killing of hundreds of protesters on Wednesday.
But Feltman's trip was planned and in the works BEFORE Wednesday's killings. The audio Inner City Press put online on Thursday night began with Egypt's Permanent Representative Mootaz Ahmadein Khalil answer Inner City Press, on Feltman, "Before what happened, he might go."Click here for audio.
Then he went on to say, "we have been contacted by the Secretariat" of the UN, "Mr. Feltman expressed his interest to go." He said, through Egypt's Mission to the UN, Feltman asked "to set up a number of high level meetings and we have done so."
On Thursday night after Inner City Press' report with audio, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Spokesperson's Office still called the trip "a rumor."
Then just before Friday's noon briefing, they spoon-fed the confirmation to Reuters UN bureau's Michele Nichols, who turned it into a two paragraph "report." The implication, repeated, was that this was the UN's responsiveness to the killing of hundreds on Wednesday.
But that's not true. This is how mis-direction by the UN, and mis-reporting on the UN, work.
Then you have the UN Human Rights machinery. Special Rapporteur on internally displaced persons Chaloka Beyani intoned by Skype about accountability. But was General Sisi watching?
Beyani to his credit previously criticized the UN Mission in Cote d'Ivoire under Bert Koenders for its actions and inactions as IDPs were killed in the Nahibly camp. ButKoenders got a promotion, to the UN Mission in Mali. This is the UN. Watch this site.
