By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 6 -- When the three mediahand-picked by France to accompany the Security Council's Africa trip were silent for the entire first day, some wondered why they had been taken, how they would reciprocate for their selection.
Now we know. They type up, without any critical analysis or even using documents they have claimed to have and report on, whatever the UN and the Western P3 Security Council members say.
Reuters, for example, types up that the UN will now belatedly turn on the FDLR. But not only hasn't it done that yet -- it arranged a meeting Sunday with an ally of Joseph Kabila who has sought to form alliances with the FDLR.
Reporting or even looking into this is not, of course, what these Reuters stories are about. As so often within the UN, they are re-typing jobs.
It's actually more devious: in some cases, what ever on the record quote to "reporters" -- which must include the three French picked reporters -- are turned into anonymous background quotes in order, paradoxically, to give them more weight, or at least make them less refutable.
Reuters reported that the UN's Dee Brillenburg Wurth "speaking to reporters," said that one third of child soldiers in the M23 militia were recruited in and trained by Rwanda, and expressed "surprise at Washington's decision regarding the Democratic Republic of Congo, which last year signed an action plan with the United Nations to stop and prevent recruitment of child soldiers. 'There have been huge results... They don't recruit children any more. There's been zero tolerance,' she said."
This is contrary to the UN Group of Experts report which Inner City Press obtained and then exclusive put online. It is an official UN document. But another of the French picked media, which presumably attended the on the record spin-fest by Dee Brillenburg Wurth, now reports that "While in Kinshasa, it seems MONUSCO provided Council members with information indicating a pattern of child recruitment by the M23 in both the territories of the DRC and Rwanda."
But it was an on the record quote. By dressing it up this way, it seems like evidence. And where is the comparison to theUN's own Group of Experts report, which states:
149. The Group is also investigating cases involving the illegal detention and use of children for military purposes by the FARDC. According to FARDC and MONUSCO sources as well as local authorities in the Kisala area of Butembo territory, between February and April 2013, FARDC’s 1032nd Battalion arrested four boys aged between 15 and 17 on charges of belonging to the Nyatura rebel group. An FARDC Major subsequently enlisted three of them as cooks, while assigning the fourth to be a soldier in Mushaki with the 106th Regiment commanded by Col. Civiri.
150. In April, UNICEF separated 19 children from the FARDC 812th Regiment located at Camp Bobozo in Kananga, in Kasai Occidental province. The Regiment had rotated from North Kivu to Kananga in March, and had forcefully recruited the children before their departure from North Kivu. Four soldiers from this Regiment acknowledged to the Group that they had been aware of the presence of the minors (commonly referred to as ‘kadogo’) in their ranks. In April, UNICEF separated two minors (one of them a girl) from the same Regiment; both had been forcefully recruited.
Since what Reuters quotes Dee Brillenburg Wurth as saying contradicts the UN's own Group of Experts report, Inner City Press has repeatedly asked that a transcript of what she "told reporters" be made public, thus far without response. Your tax money (not) at work.
Voice of America is still reporting only fluff, and re-tweeting Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky's e-mails about Syria. (At least there are no monarch. Yet.) This is the re-typing that made them useful to France, which made the selection, and to others which looked the other way and accepted a non-transparent, colonial process.
Now - in Rwanda, will the Security Council as Nesirky said be visiting the Gizosi Genocide Memorial? Inner City Press has asked. Watch this site.
