DR Congo Army Linked to Child Soldiers By UN Own Group of Experts, But Reuters Ignores, MONUSCO Stonewalls, VOA Fluff

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 6 -- What did Reuters write so far on the French-led UN Security Council through Africa?

It quoted a UN MONUSCO mission staffer Dee Brillenburg Wurth, who expressed "surprise at Washington's decision regarding the Democratic Republic of Congo, which last year signed an action plan with the United Nations to stop and prevent recruitment of child soldiers. 'There have been huge results... They don't recruit children any more. There's been zero tolerance,' she said." 

  That's how the Reuters article ends.

   But this is directly contradicted by the UN's own Group of Experts report, which Inner City Press obtained and thenexclusively put online, as credited not only by BBC and Bloomberg but also Congolese publications like Le Potentiel.

Here, to be compared to the statement of MONUSCO's Dee Brillenburg Wurth run unquestioned by Reuters, are two sample paragraphs from the UN's own Group of Experts report:

149. The Group is also investigating cases involving the illegal detention and use of children for military purposes by the FARDC. According to FARDC and MONUSCO sources as well as local authorities in the Kisala area of Butembo territory, between February and April 2013, FARDC’s 1032nd Battalion arrested four boys aged between 15 and 17 on charges of belonging to the Nyatura rebel group. An FARDC Major subsequently enlisted three of them as cooks, while assigning the fourth to be a soldier in Mushaki with the 106th Regiment commanded by Col. Civiri.

150. In April, UNICEF separated 19 children from the FARDC 812th Regiment located at Camp Bobozo in Kananga, in Kasai Occidental province. The Regiment had rotated from North Kivu to Kananga in March, and had forcefully recruited the children before their departure from North Kivu. Four soldiers from this Regiment acknowledged to the Group that they had been aware of the presence of the minors (commonly referred to as ‘kadogo’) in their ranks. In April, UNICEF separated two minors (one of them a girl) from the same Regiment; both had been forcefully recruited.

  So why is MONUSCO, through Reuters, defending the DRC Army (which, incidentally, commited at least 135 rapes in Minova in November 2012)?

  Inner City Press has asked MONUSCO and its leader Martin Kobler to make public a transcript of what Dee Brillenburg Wurth (and Goma office chief Ray Torres) "told reporters" -- so far, without response. Your tax dollars at work.

  Meanwhile another media hand-picked by France, Voice of America, published a story praising a UN "Quick Impact Project," and now tweets a photograph of peacekeepers, captioned -- just as MONUSCO or Ladsous' DPKO would do it -- "20,000 UN Peacekeepers working to make civilians safer in eastern DRC." 

 She'd surely say the same thing, on cue, about peacekeepers in Haiti, where the UN brought cholera. For this type of fluff coverage, just have the UN (or the French mission, which refuses questions) do it. Watch this site.

UN Peacekeeping in DR Congo, Kobler Under Ladsous, Won't Explain French Colonial Domination, FrancAfrique

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 6 -- If the UN Security Council had gone on a trip to Iraq to visit "its" UNAMI peacekeeping mission, would the United States have been allowed to alone hand-pick which media could go on the UN plane and cover the trip?

That is what was allowed to happen on the Security Council's current trip to Africa. The UN has admitted, on camera, that France was allowed to pick which media would fly in the UN plane, from Kinshasa to Goma to Kigali to Entebbe to Addis Ababa.

  Thus the UN (and its Security Council) have enshrined FranceAfrique, and colonialism. How can it be justified?

  Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky cut off the question, telling Inner City Press that the other correspondents in the room didn't care to hear about Inner City Press' travel arrangements, or lack thereof. Video here. 

  So Inner City Press has put the question to Martin Kobler, the UN's top envoy in the Council trip's first stop, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As luck would have it, Kobler was previously the top envoy in Iraq. Would he have accepted a "Security Council" trip with media hand picked only by the US?

  But Kobler hasn't answered. Nor has his MONUSCO provided any transcript of what its Dee Brillenburg Wurth "told reporters," about M23 child soldiers coming from and being trained by Rwanda, and the DRC being blameless. (See hand-picked Reuters piece here.)

   Kobler tweeted that his head of office in Goma Ray Torres was updating the Council about negotiations involving Mai Mai Cheka, sanctioned for mass rape. No clarification, or transcript, has been provided. Will it now, that France's Genocide Joyride has moved to to Rwanda?

  A press conference was held at the Goma airport; Kobler tweeted a photograph but hasn't answered why France was allowed to pick the journalists to cover the trip. The UN's Radio Okapi, during the Goma press conference, was broadcasting... sports. Call it bread and circuses.

  So is the UN, or at least UN Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row to head DPKO, a vehicle for neo-colonialism? Is this, as some now say, just France's Genocide Joyride? It seems these questions should be answered. Watch this site.