By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 15 -- The last time UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous was scheduled to take questions from the press, instead he lunged forward and blocked the Press' camera, then canceled his Q&A stakeout on Mali. Vine here.
Since then more peacekeepers have been killed and injured but Ladsous, unlike his also-French predecessors Alain Le Roy and Jean-Marie Guehenno, has not done a stakeout to speak up for those put under his command.
Instead, Ladsous now tried to do softball interviews with hand-picked correspondents. Even that works out badly -- perhaps very badly.
In a recent “interview,” in which for example UN Peacekeeping bringing cholera to Haiti is vaguely mentioned but not followed up on, it slips out that Ladsous is expanding “signal intelligence, using high-tech surveillance of communications such as telephone eavesdropping.”
How can it be that at the same time that the UN General Assembly is considering a Brazilian and German drafted resolution on Privacy in the Digital Age, Ladsous is expanding eavesdropping and wire-tapping? On whose authority?
This was from a softball interview, which didn't mention that in 1994 Ladsous supported and pushed for the escape of genocidaires from Rwanda into Eastern Congo where he now uses the Force Intervention Brigade as, in his words, a “useful tool.” Nor does the interview mention Western Sahara, much less the problematic light thrown on Ladsous by recently leaked cables.
More recently, Ladsous was asked not only about UN Peacekeeping bringing cholera to Haiti -- Ladsous insisted that it hasn't been proved -- but also about proceeding with drones without C-34 member states' approval, and about the expanding rape scandals. On these, Ladsous claimed he is setting up reviews.
But Ladsous for months refused Press questions about, and covered up, the 130 rapes by the DR Congo Army in Minova. Video compilation here.
Is it any wonder that his UNAMID in Darfur tried to quickly deny that mass rapes took place in Tabit in Darfur?
Is this performance acceptable? To whom? Watch this site.
