By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 8, more here -- While the UN Security Council celebrated itself on the 20th anniversary of starting the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, the FDLR has yet to be neutralized -- also after 20 years.
The head of UN Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous had his own role in 1994, arguing for the escape of the Hutu genocidaires into Eastern Congo. Now, the MONUSCO mission's Force Intervention Brigade is far from certain to target the FDLR on or after January 2, 2015, whatever the claims.
Back in 2011 when Ladsous was France's last-minute replacement for Jerome Bonnafont as head of UN Peacekeeping and Inner City Press reported it, Agence France Presse got UN Correspondents Association president Giampaolo Pioli to draft a statement against the the Press for it, to ban any dissent to the statement, then try to get Inner City Pressthrown out of the UN. Now Pioli seeks to return atop UNCA, become the UN's Censorship Alliance. Click here for that.
Amid reports on June 27 that the UN flew a sanctioned militia leader of the FDLR militia on a UN aircraft in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Inner City Press asked UN spokesman Stephane Dujurric about it at the UN noon briefing on June 27:
Inner City Press: why did MONUSCO [United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo] fly him to Goma to Kisangani and then to Kinshasa when, in fact, I think there’s an arrest warrant for him?
Spokesman Dujarric: I’m not aware of any other services provided to him by MONUSCO.
But it turns out that UN Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous flew the sanctioned FDLR leader from Eastern Congo to Kinshasa. Rwanda complained about this, in writing, on June 26.
On July 16, Inner City Press asked Rwanda's Deputy Permanent Representative what has been Ladsous' Department of Peacekeeping Operations' response.
There has BEEN no response - in more than three weeks. Video here, and embedded below.
Little more than an hour later, Ladsous floated into the Security Council to talk about Central African Republic -- without having answered a written complaint from a Security Council member in more than three weeks. We call this: unaccountable.
Dujarric on June 27, and in the subsequent times Inner City Press asked, insisted that not only Mary Robinson (who today left her post as the UN's Great Lakes envoy) but also US envoy Russ Feingold requested the waiver, and that the FDLR leader Gaston Iyamuremye a/k/a Rumuli had not traveled to Rome, arguing that only that was important.
Inner City Press disagrees -- why would UN Peacekeeping underHerve Ladsous given his history on Rwanda, representing France in the Security Council in 1994 arguing for the escape of the genocidaires into Eastern Congo, fly a sanctioned FDLR figure linked to the genocide around?
On July 15, Haq said Rumuli was escorted from Kinshasa back to the east. Video here.
Inner City Press asked about MONUSCO escorting Rumuli.
Haq said what he had read did not say MONUSCO did the escorting. So who did? And if not the UN, how does the UN know where Rumuli went? Watch this site.
