By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 14 -- A week after Ban Ki-moon on June 6 met with the Asia Group of states at the UN seeking a second term as Secretary General, controversy swirled around the dropping of a genocide case by the UN affiliated Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.
On June 13, Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky:
Inner City Press: a number of international staff have left because the third case was sort of suspended without investigation by the judges. So, it says, this is what I wanted to ask you, it said that these staff members wrote to the Secretary-General before they quit. I wanted to know if that’s true and I wanted to know what he thinks, given the controversy that surrounded his visit to Cambodia; does he have any comment at all on what is viewed as sort of disorder in the court or shutting down of the inquiry into the Khmer Rouge era there?
Spokesperson Nesirky: Probably a little later today, Matthew.
During Ban's trip to Cambodia last October, Hun Sen spoke of the removal of the head of the UN human rights office in Phnom Penh, Christophe Peschoux. Ban offered little defense of him. Nesirky called it “an internal personnel matter” and when Peschoux left earlier this year, Nesirky's office through his deputy Farhan Haq had “no comment at this time,” or since.
But on June 13 a comment was promised, and 24 hours it was issued -- a statement on the ECCC. The statement is long and detailed but is hardly responsive to the human rights and accountability questions raised. As on Peschoux, it says that Ban's UN will “not comment on internal United Nations administrative or staffing processes.”
