In South Sudan, India Tells Press Two Peacekeepers Killed, One in Critical Condition, Call for Accountability

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 19 -- From South Sudan, the Indian mission at the UN in New York has been informed that two of its peacekeepers in Akobo were killed, and an additional peacekeeper is in critical condition.

  The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations has said nothing yet. But India's Permanent Representative Asoke Mukerji reminded Inner City Press that on the day he presented his credentials and began at the UN, five Indian peacekeepers were killed in South Sudan.

  In this instance, there were 40 peacekeepers in the base in Akobo -- and civilians, on which Inner City Press aims to report more. Some 1500 youths, said to be of the Lou Nuer tribe supportive of ousted Vice President Riek Machar, "fired indiscriminately" at the UN base.

  Mukerji called for the prosecutions of those who kill peacekeepers. He separately reminded Inner City Press of the ruling of the previous UN Legal Counsel Patricia O'Brien that with the Force Intervention Brigade on the Democratic Republic of the Congo - and now with peacekeepers in Mali shooting at civilians and co-housing with France's Serval force -- UN peacekeepers are becoming combatants, parties to armed conflict.

  Murkerji said that troop contributing countries should be told this. This would seem to be the job of the chief of UN Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous (who says he "has a policy" ofnot answering Press questions) and of the President of the Security Council.

  This month that is France's Gerard Araud, who left a December 19 Peacekeeping seminar before the moment of silence, tweeted by Inner City Press, for the Indian peacekeepers. Most recently he refused to answer specific questions about intermingling with Serval making UN peacekeepers combatants, calling it micro-management and chiding the question.

We are endeavoring to find out more about the killings in South Sudan, and for accountability. So far, without any assistance or transparency from Ladsous' UN Peacekeeping. Watch this site.

   

After UN Peacekeepers In Mali Shoot Civilians, France's Araud Refuses to Answer If They Are Combatants: AFP Servile for Serval

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 17 -- After Mali police shot at civilians in Kidal, French Ambassador Gerard Araud when asked by Inner City Press said there should be an investigation. That was at the beginning of December, Araud's (last?) month as UN Security Council president.

  Since then, the UN peacekeepers themselves have shot civilians. On December 16 Inner City Press asked Araud a question, and he said to ask the UN Secretariat. 

   Inner City Press did, on December 17 but UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky did not answer whether the UN Peacekeepers have become "combatants," both by shooting at civilians and by being co-housed with the France Serval force, a party to an armed conflict.

  So this is a question that Araud should have to answer, both as Security Council president and as France's Ambassador to the UN. But at a stakeout later on December 17 about South Sudan, after agreeing to answer a non-South Sudan question from Reuters (predictably about removing Assad from executive power in Syria, a French desire), Araud sniffed and rejected this very question about Mali.

  Are UN peacekeepers, under the command of Herve Ladsous the fourth Frenchman in a row to head UN Peacekeeping, now combatants, co-housed with French troops and shooting at civilians?

  Araud launched into a lecture about how peacekeeping missions are structured -- France should know, of course -- and then told Inner City Press it should check into this philosophy before even asking a question.

  He then walked away from the stakeout microphone without answering if the UN peacekeepers have become combatants. An Agence France Presse scribe, who previously tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN with a complaint leading with how Inner City Press asked a question to Ladsous about rapes by his partners in the Congolese Army, stood smirking, as if empowered by Araud's walk-away from the stakeout. Et bien, non.

  Araud might use the stakeout to try to get more business for French companies in the UN Peacekeeping France already dominates -- we'll have more on this -- and to solicit softball questions while refusing to answer, two days in a row now, questions about the UN mission in Mali now shooting at civilians. 

  But ultimately, as President of the Security Council this question about peacekeepers becoming combatants and therefore targets must be answered. Watch this site.