By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 6 -- If the UN Security Council had gone on a trip to Iraq to visit "its" UNAMI peacekeeping mission, would the United States have been allowed to alone hand-pick which media could go on the UN plane and cover the trip?
That is what was allowed to happen on the Security Council's current trip to Africa. The UN has admitted, on camera, that France was allowed to pick which media would fly in the UN plane, from Kinshasa to Goma to Kigali to Entebbe to Addis Ababa.
Thus the UN (and its Security Council) have enshrined FranceAfrique, and colonialism. How can it be justified?
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky cut off the question, telling Inner City Press that the other correspondents in the room didn't care to hear about Inner City Press' travel arrangements, or lack thereof. Video here.
So Inner City Press has put the question to Martin Kobler, the UN's top envoy in the Council trip's first stop, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As luck would have it, Kobler was previously the top envoy in Iraq. Would he have accepted a "Security Council" trip with media hand picked only by the US?
But Kobler hasn't answered. Nor has his MONUSCO provided any transcript of what its Dee Brillenburg Wurth "told reporters," about M23 child soldiers coming from and being trained by Rwanda, and the DRC being blameless. (See hand-picked Reuters piece here.)
Kobler tweeted that his head of office in Goma Ray Torres was updating the Council about negotiations involving Mai Mai Cheka, sanctioned for mass rape. No clarification, or transcript, has been provided. Will it now, that France's Genocide Joyride has moved to to Rwanda?
A press conference was held at the Goma airport; Kobler tweeted a photograph but hasn't answered why France was allowed to pick the journalists to cover the trip. The UN's Radio Okapi, during the Goma press conference, was broadcasting... sports. Call it bread and circuses.
So is the UN, or at least UN Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row to head DPKO, a vehicle for neo-colonialism? Is this, as some now say, just France's Genocide Joyride? It seems these questions should be answered. Watch this site.
