UNITED NATIONS, September 24 – After India's foreign minister Sushma Swaraj in her UN General Assembly speech said while her country exports IT, Pakistan exports terrorists, Pakistani Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi asked for the right of reply at the end of Saturday's UNGA session. She morphed India as the biggest democracy into the biggest hypocrisy - and raised up a photograph showing the impact of the use of pellet guns. But it appears the photo used was not from Kashmir, but from Gaza. What next?
The day before on Friday, Inner City Press had asked the Commissioner General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Pierre Krähenbühl, about UNRWA's policies on social media. Inner City Press asked about another UN agency, UNHCR, being less than transparent after a staffer called for “harder repression” of Anglophones in Cameroon; another example was UNRWA illustrating the situation in Palestine with a photo from... Syria. So these things happen, but UNRWA is under different pressures to issue corrections, including by funders. What will Pakistan do? Will we find out by the Daily Dawn? We aim to have more on this - and on UN Spokespeople being less responsive than government's Ambassadors, because the UN or at least its Spokesman is apparently under no pressure or metric to be responsive. After UN Secretary General met with Yousef Al Othaimeen, the Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the UN issues a read-out that "they discussed a number of issues of mutual concern, including counterterrorism, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan, as well as resolving the plight of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar." Inner City Press tweeted photohere. Then the UN "re-issued" the read-out, dropping Somalia and the plight of the Rohinga, and adding the Middle East peace process: "The Secretaries-General discussed a number of issues in OIC’s area of responsibility, including counterterrorism, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, the Middle East Process and Myanmar. The Secretaries-General agreed to strengthen cooperation between the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations." So who complained? Myanmar about the "plight of the Rohingya"? The OIC about no MEPP? Who said, drop Somalia? We aim to have more on this. On September 22, Guteres met with Cameroon's 30-plus year President Paul Biya, he met Saturday morning with DR Congo holdover Joseph Kabila, now with white in his beard, and the prime minister of Togo, where protesters against the father and son in power for 50 years are being shot and killed. Inner City Press covered the meetings, or photo ops, here. There was also Sri Lanka (Sirisena without accountability) and Libya's Serraj. While no read-outs have issued yet, the Cameroon read-out refers only to the political situation in the country - that would be, the killing and jailing of Anglophones. This is today's UN.
