On Sri Lanka, Protest Set Amid UN Envoy Fernandez Taranco's Silence, Hypocrisy in Ban Ki-moon's UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 25 -- After UN official Oscar Fernandez Taranco visited Sri Lanka but has refused to take Press questions upon his return to New York, Inner City Press asked UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric about it on June 25.

  An hour before a peaceful protest scheduled across from the UN on 47th Street calling for UN action on Bodi Bala Sena and Gnanasara Thero, Dujarric replied that he was not aware of the protest.

  Who in the UN Secretariat, Inner City Press asked, will accept the protesters' letter? In a previous protest by Sri Lankan Tamils, the UN sent a lower level functionary who told the protesters the letter would be rejected if they told the Press about it. Dujarric said he would check. This comes amid much hypocrisy at the UN.

   With Navi Pillay slated to leave as UN High Commissioner on Human Rights on August 31, on June 25 she made an announcement about the HRC Panel on Sri Lanka.

  Meanwhile amid renewed Buddhist extremist violence in the country and restrictions on media, on June 24 and June 25 Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Stephane Dujarric about Ban's envoy Oscar Fernandez Taranco's visit.

   Dujarric said Taranco discussed "post war achievements." Inner City Press asked, did he discuss press freedom issues? Apparently not.

    This comes as many big-wigs in the UN use the outrageous detention of three Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt to promote... themselves. What did they say about the killing of five journalists in Eastern Ukraine? What have they said about Sri Lanka? Some in the UN even tried to censor Sri Lanka coverage, here.

    Here's from Pillay announcement:

"Three distinguished experts have agreed to advise and support the team set up to conduct a comprehensive investigation of alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka, as mandated by the Human Rights Council in March:

Mr Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who has also served as a UN diplomat and mediator and is renowned for his international peace work;

Ms Silvia Cartwright, former Governor-General and High Court judge of New Zealand, and judge of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts in Cambodia, as well as former member of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women;

Ms Asma Jahangir, former President of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association and of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, previous holder of several Human Rights Council mandates and member of a recent fact-finding body into Israeli settlements."

  But the Rajapaksa government has already indicated it will not cooperate. In fact, it has made threats to go after anyone who does cooperate.

   Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, for whom many say inaction on Sri Lanka has been a low point of his tenure, nominated Jordan's Prince Zeid as Pillay's successor, to begin on September 1.

  As Inner City Press reported, Zeid to his credit was troubled by the inclusion of controversial military figure Shavendra Silva on Ban's and Herve Ladsous' Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations.

  Silva remains a figure within the UN, texting in Sri Lanka's seat in the General Assembly. 

 The UN has entirely stonewalled Press questions about thenew White Flag killings report and the light it sheds on current UN official Vijay Nambiar and former UN official, now Sri Lankan Ambassador Palitha Kohona.

  It was about a past financial relationship between Kohona and the president of the UN Correspondents Association, who then agreed to an UNCA screening of a Rajapaksa government movie denying war crimes that UNCA tried to censor.

When Inner City Press reported on the background to Kohona getting the Rajapaksa government's denial of war crimes, “Lies Agreed To,” screened in the Dag Hammarjkold Library auditorium, the reaction from the then-president and executive committee of the United Nations Correspondents Association are summarized here. One wag wondered whether the 2009 Bloodbath on the Beach has now been echoed as Blowhards on the Beach, here.

   In Sri Lanka now the Rajapaksa government blocks websites it doesn't like. The UNCA board asked that Inner City Press articles be removed from the internet. This was refused. One UNCA board member claimed to Google that his “for the record” complaint to the UN trying to get Inner City Press thrown out was in fact private and “copyrighted.”  Here is a response from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

   This got it banned from Google's Search, under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which threatens to be globalized through the Trans Pacific Partnership. Who said there is not censorship in the UN, and in the United States?

  Now the new Free UN Coalition for Access opposes all of this, and attacks on media work both inside the UN bothfurther afield and as close at 47th Street, west of First Avenue. Watch this site.

   

Jordan's Prince Zeid Nominated To Replace Navi Pillay at UN's Rights Commissioner, Inner City Press Raised Questions

By Matthew Russell Lee, Third in a series

UNITED NATIONS, June 6 -- Two days ago, Inner City Press reported that Prince Zeid of Jordan was vetted to replace Navi Pillay as UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.

  Today the UN confirmed it - three hours after refusing to answer Inner City Press' questions about having dangled a job in front of a sitting Ambassador who voted on Secretariat requests. Video here of June 5 and June 6 questions; embedded below.

  Here is the UN's announcement:

“The Secretary-General, following consultations with the Chairmen of the regional groups of Member States, today informed the General Assembly of his intention to appoint H.R.H. Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein of Jordan as the new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein is currently Jordan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a post he held previously for six and a half years, from 2000 to 2007. From 2007 to 2010 he served as Jordan's Ambassador to the United States and non-resident Ambassador to Mexico. He also served as Jordan’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador, from 1996 to 2000.”

  Inner City Press has previously praised Zeid's work on sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers, and in questioning controversial Sri Lankan military figure Shavendra Silva being on Ban Ki-moon's Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations. 

There were also as candidates two women from Pakistan, Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, who was also a candidate against Pillay in 2008. Also in the running was Nobel prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta.  Inner City Press on May 9 asked the UN about Jose Ramos-Horta, moonlighting for UBrain.tv while serving as UN enovy in Guinea Bissau.  The UN has yet to answer.

  Other names in circulation included Indonesia's Marzuki Darusman, who has worked on Sri Lanka and more recently North Korea.

  Current UN Human Rights official in New York Ivan Simonovic, nowworking on a new report on Ukraine including the Odessa killings by June 17, was star-crossed by geography: it's Asia's turn -- though Ban's deputy spokesman Farhan Haq denied that on June 6, video soon.

   But it's supposed to be Eastern Europe's turn for the next Secretary General, and that is not stopping Helen Clark and others for campaigning for it...

Back on May 9, Inner City Press asked:

Inner City Press: I'd like to ask about Guinea-Bissau and then some press freedom questions... can you confirm that Jose Ramos Horta is leaving? It's said that he’s leaving to go work at UBrainTV based in Tokyo and quote, “he has been an adviser for UbrainTV for more than a year.” I wanted to know, is it permissible to be a full-time SRSG and also be an adviser to a for-profit company? Was this cleared by the ethics office?

Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq: I don’t have any information about any other business that Mr. Ramos Horta may or may not have, so I don’t have any comment on that. Certainly, he continues with his work right now though.

  Since that May 9 exchange there has been no information from the UN Spokesperson's office. Inner City Press held off on this report, out of respect for Ramos-Horta. But doesn't the UN have to answer? Watch this site.

  

   

At UN, Child Soldier Post Mulled for Fisher, Sooka, Sabliere or Jahangir, Haiti Cholera & HRW Echoes

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 9 -- With Children and Armed Conflict the closed door topic of the UN Security Council on Monday, talk turned to who will replace outgoing CAAC envoy Radhika Coomaraswamy.

  Monday's meeting included a report drafted by the so-called father of the agenda item, France's Jean-Marc de la Sabliere. He is mentioned as possibly returning to the UN to replace Coomaraswamy, though travel's said to be a problem.

   Also mentioned is Yasmin Sooka, who most recently for the UN served on Ban Ki-moon's Group of Experts on Sri Lanka, a report that Ban never embraced as his own.

  Popular with NGOs is Asma Jahangir, particularly given recent threats against her. Less popular with NGOs, but being pushed hard by Canada is Nigel Fisher. 

  His many dismissive responses about the UN falling short in Haiti, denying the introduction of cholera by MINUSTAH peacekeepers and the shameless lack of accountability for sexual abuse, can't help the Fisher case.

 Last week on this Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's Deputy spokesman:

Inner City Press: Some time ago, I asked about this long article in the Christian Science Monitor called “Will the UN legacy in Haiti be all about scandal?” and it was said that you don’t comment on articles. But there’s now been a letter by Mariano Fernandez, the SRSG of MINUSTAH, and a lot of people are concerned that he said, on the issue of sexual abuse: “I will not evade the cases of sexual exploitation and abuse. They are outrageous and totally unacceptable and they are severely punished.” But what people don’t understand is it seems that the only punishment they can find is of a single one-year sentence to a Pakistani peacekeeper, nothing else for all the various cases raised. And the question is, is that what he is referring to? And does the UN consider one year for rape of a minor to be the severe punishment to which he’s referring?

Deputy Spokesperson: Well, I would invite you to ask the gentleman to explain what he was saying. Our position on sexual violence is that there is a zero-tolerance policy on sexual violence. Now, as you know, it is not up the United Nations itself to judge the cases of what happens. It’s up to the troop-contributing States. They apply justice and it’s up to them to make sure that justice is served. However, in the cases that I’ve seen recently, people have been identified, they have been removed from their posts and they have been subjected to national jurisprudence. In that sense, that is what has to be done.

Question: Yes, I understand that. It’s really this use of the idea of the “severely punished”. If he said, “we do what we can as the UN and send them back to the country”, then that’s the reality. But he seemed to be claiming that this was a sufficient punishment. I’m just asking you, is that the UN’s position?

Deputy Spokesperson: Well, I haven’t seen the reported letter myself, so I’ll have to check in with DPKO to see what they have to say on it.

  And in the four days since, there's been nothing from Herve Ladsous' DPKO on this. Ladsous' first public refusal to answer any Inner City Press question, due to critical coverage, came in response to questions on Ban Ki-moon and he taking advice from alleged war criminal Sri Lanka general Shavendra Silva, and about DPKO's role in cholera in Haiti. And so it goes at the UN.

Footnote: present in Monday's "Arria formula" was the UN representative of Human Rights Watch. As twice notedrecently, incoming Security Council member Rwanda has a strong and unrebutted critique of HRW. 

  Rwanda's Permanent Representative said to Inner City Press last week this is the "count down on Ken Roth." Will 2013 Arria Formula meetings be different? Did it make sense to devote more energy to responding to the spokesman of a P-5 member of the Security Council than the Foreign Minister of an incoming elected Council member, even to the point of calling her an "ambassador" and not correcting it? We'll see.