By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 25 -- As the UN Security Council ends its Haiti visit, has there been any answer, much less accountability, for the UN bringing cholera there? The UN Mission MINUSTAH has refused to answer questions.
And when the question was put to UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric, in a France Inter radio piece broadcast tonight, he shifted the question to old UN sins of omission -- Rwanda and Srebenica -- rather than the more recent sin, or murder, of commission. Audio here; Inner City Press at Minute 24, UN response at end.
The long-form France Inter piece includes a clip up in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operation's 24/7 center, where strangely they said they were monitoring Burkina Faso, where DPKO has no peacekeeping mission at all.
DPKO's spokesman is interviewed, but Inner City Press understands that promised interview with Ladsous was canceled once the questions got less than friendly. It's no surprise - see this with video, from last week, of Ladsous saying “I do not respond to your questions Mister.”
Telling, the show lists Cote d'Ivoire, where UN Peacekeeping help oust critic of FrancAfrique Laurent Gbagbo from power, as a success of the UN, and attributes UN Security Council blockages to Russia and China, without much mentioning US vetoes on Palestine, and France's abstention for BNP Paribas.
Human Rights Watch's self-described “lobbyist” is interviewed and says the obligatory things about holding the UN accountable. But what has HRW actually said or done about the UN killing 8,000 people in Haiti? When Inner City Press asked HRW what its Ken Roth raised to Ban Ki-moon, no substantive answer was given, and HRW removed Inner City Press from its email lobbying. And so it goes.
Hope, of course, must spring eternal. If an Ambassador from Jordan, hosted in Haiti by the US and Chile, can publicly note the plight of women imprisoned without trial, then no cover-up can be complete. That, at least, in the hope. Watch this site.
