Media Critique: Watching or Whitewashing UN's FIB or Force Intervention Brigade, of DR Congo Bombs & Reuters Spying for UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 25 -- Who will watch the UN's FIB, its Force Intervention Brigade in Eastern Congo?

  When the FIB's component from Tanzania practiced raiding a medical tent clearly marked with a red cross, Al Jazeera was there to film it. When it went on-air, Inner City Press at the UN in New York (before Al Jazeera America became UNviewable there since August 20) saw it and wrote a story, dubbing this practice for violating the Geneva Conventions, here.

  In fairness we note that the reporter on the piece told Inner City Press on August 25 that he "saw it as rehearsal attack against an empty tent. Not on a medical camp."

  While some humanitarians who have contacted Inner City Press disagree, it seems a fair point, when coupled with recognition that the UN's FIB needs a hard look.

  But who will give that hard look? We have shown, just last week at the UN in New York, that wire service Reuters was willing to channel an unnamed UN official's spin that the M23 rebels had entered the no-weapons security zone, even as the acting chief of UN Peacekeeping Edmond Mulet told Inner City Press and a different, less UN-useful wire service thatthere had been no violation of the security zone.

  Compared to the re-type shop (and worse) its UN bureau has become, Reuters has relatively better reporters in Kinshasa and Cote d'Ivoire. The latter, Joe Bavier we've met and liked and so held off saying this. But to unself-consciously say that MONUSCO of course must respond to protect civilians -- "they have a clear obligation to respond" -- without mentioning that MONUSCO and UN Peacekeeping are still assisting the Congolese Army units which raped 135 women and girls in Minova, seems to require noting.

  As then does calling the "UN far and away the most credible source" or observer -- after the UN covered up and stonewalled on not only the Minova rapes, but its own role in bringing cholera to Haiti. (Al Jazeera's recent 30 minute documentary on the topic was not viewable in the UN, as protested by the new Free UN Coalition for Access,@FUNCA_info)

  Deeming the UN, from the outset, the most credible source may be a less than journalistic approach -- for purposes of this piece, in the Congo, but in Syria and elsewhere as well.

    For now on DRC this still remains outstanding: at Friday's noon briefing, video here from Minute 10:15, Inner City Press asked the UN's outgoing deputy spokesperson Eduardo Del Buey about the answer, when Inner City Press and another journalist asked UN Peacekeeping acting chief Edmond Mulet Thursday if the M23 rebels had entered the security zone established around Goma.

  "No," Mulet said. "Just mortars." He went on to refer to the separate "red line" established when M23 agreed in Kampala to pull out of Goma. (The portion of that agreement that gave M23 one third of the security force at the Goma airport remains unimplemented.)

  But later on Thursday, the wire service Reuters reported "a senior U.N. official, who asked not to be named, said that on Thursday the rebels entered a security zone surrounding Goma" -- which Mulet, the acting chief of DPKO, had just denied. Inner City Press and the other journalist waited to ask Mulet again, and got the same answer.

  So who is this "senior UN official who asked not to be named"? In UN Peacekeeping, only Herve Ladsous is senior to and could over-rule Mulet.

  Ladsous has in the past spoon-fed answers of dubious veracity to this same Reuters UN bureau bragging for example about the Congolese Army imposing accountability for the 135 rapes in Minova in November 2012.

   But with only a few arrests for the 135 rapes, Ladsous' DPKO continues supporting the 391st Battalion, even as it is now implicated in corpse desecration.

That the UN would try to use Reuters, willingly, resonates with a documented instance in June 2012 when Reuters UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau gave to UN official Stephane Dujarric an internal UNCA anti-Press document,three minutes after saying he would not do so. Story here,audio here, document here, in which Charbonneau tells Dujarric, "You didn't get this from me."

  So is Reuters' "senior UN official who asked not to be named" someone junior to Mulet, or as another journalist suggested, no one at all? 

  On August 23, Del Buey said he knew what Mulet had said, and has "seen other reports." He said he'd have to check. But August 23 was his last day at the UN (the Free UN Coalition for Access wished him well, video here at Minute 9:55).  So we'll see. Watch this site.

   

On Rwanda Aid to DRC Mutiny, Meece Lied on May 22, BBC Shows, Credited

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 28, updated -- Regarding whether Rwanda has assisted the mutiny in Eastern Congo, Inner City Press on May 22 asked UN envoy Roger Meece on the MONUSCO Mission to disclose his knowledge of Rwandan support for the breakaway factions. Meece said, "I have not seen and I am not aware." Video here, from Minute 13:57.

  But this was false. Now MONUSCO's chief for Goma in Eastern Congo Hiroute Guebre-Sellassie has told BBC on camera of defectors from the mutineers who say they were recruited to fight in the Rwandan army but in fact deployed in Congo for the mutiny. This include at least one child soldier.

  So Meece was lying or ill-informed; either way, what will the UN do? On May 22, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky cut Inner City Press off from acting any follow up question. Video here at 17:59. 

 The UN's own press release of Meece's appearance did not mention Inner City Press' Rwanda question, or Meece's answer, as Inner City Press wrote about, here.

BCC's follow up was brought to Inner City Press' attention by Vincent Harris on Twitter; both are being credited here. This stands in contrast to Reuters' and its Louis Charbonneau's May 21 uncredited theft of Inner City Press' March 28 exclusive that US official Jeffrey Feltman would come to work at the UN, which Foreign Policy's The Cable credited.

Earlier in the Meece press conference on May 22, Reuters' Charbonneau asked about a statement on the Lord's Resistance Army provided to him and "a colleague from Agence Frence Presse," on information and belief Tim Witcher of Agence France Presse, who was used by the French Mission to target Inner City Press for reporting how out of touch the Mission was with Paris that it didn't even know, the day of the announcement, that Herve "The Drone" Ladsous would replace Jerome Bonnafont as the intra-French replacement for Alain Le Roy at UN Peacekeeping.

  Witcher and Charbonneau are part of an old-media scam in which they steal stories withour credit from smaller less corporate reporters then seek to have these expelled by abusing what power they have. This is being opposed.

Update: hours after publication of the above, Reuters promoted a story mimicking the BCC story -- but failed to say that on May 22 at the UN Meece denied the UN knew of Rwanda support for the DRC rebels in the UN noon briefing on May 22 when Reuters' UN "bureau chief" was there (albeit asking about the LRA). So it is a lame wire where the left hand doesn't tell the right hand what it had seen and done? Or is it soft on the UN?

To bylined editor Joe Bavier's credit, his story does credit the BBC -- so it's not that no one at Reuters knows how to credit, it's that Reuters has allowed its UN bureau chief Charbonneau to adopt what he has announced as a POLICY of not crediting Inner City Press, and seeking to have it expelled. What kind of news organization is this? Watch this site.