On Sri Lanka, After Inner City Press Publishes Ban Ki-moon's Post-Failure Plan, His Spokesperson Says It "May Not Exist" - But See Video

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 17 -- Ever since the UN of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon did nothing, and worse, as 40,000 civilians were killed in Sri Lanka in 2009, its officials and spokespeople have claimed they want to learn from what happened.

  But now, not only did the UN withhold its internal report on the lesson learned. After Inner City Press obtained andexclusively published the report on October 11 and Ban's associate spokesperson Farhan Haq answered Press questions about it, today lead spokesperson Martin Nesirky said that nothing had been confirmed, the documents referred to "may or may not exist." 

   Well, it exists and cannot be covered up. Inner City Pressput it online here.

  Asking about the UN system human rights plan citing failure in Sri Lanka as its impetus, which it published on October 14, Inner City Press sought clarification from Nesirky: was this proposal to merge "Rule of Law" into human rights the UN's main response?

Nesirky replied that Inner City Press must be a "member of the magic circle," since it cites "documents that may or may not exist."

Really? Here is the post Sri Lanka "action plan" which Inner City Press published on October 11.

Here is the UN system human rights / rule of law proposal Inner City Press published on October 14.

Back on October 11, Nesirky's associate Farhan Haq told Inner City Press "in terms of other information that we can put out, we’ll be preparing a summary of the Action Plan."

Actually, the "one pager" of the action plan already existed. Inner City Press had it, and now publishes it here.

  The UN already failed, massively, in Sri Lanka in 2009. Why would it now be trying to deny the existence of its own reports into the matter? We will have more on this. Watch this site.

Footnote: Despite Nesirky saying he had read the UN's transcript of what his associate Farhan Haq said on October 11, when his office called "the lid is on" and closed at 6:30 pm on October 17, the day's noon briefing transcript had still not been put online.

  Inner City Press has noted that these UN transcripts are intentionally inaccurate, for example when Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson was the guest, omitted the name "Free UN Coalition for Access" which the UN otherwise tries to silence but leaving in "UN Correspondents Association," Ban's UN Censorship Alliance (including on Sri Lanka, here).

 So we are using video now, as more trustworthy. Click here for a sample, and there will be more.