By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 23 -- The day after Syrian assembled in Homs to petition a UN mission as it passed through, only to face deadly fire afterward from Assad security force, the UN went out of its way to say it wasn't witnessed by and didn't "involve the mission directly."
After Monday's murders in Homs, Inner City Press on Tuesday after the UN's acting deputy spokesman Farhan Haq about the sequence of events. Haq replied:
"We do understand... that people killed and injured in the protest in Homs yesterday. It is not something that involved the mission directly. A protest situation had developed in Homs, the mission was advised to leave for security reasons. Then afterward we learned of the information of people being killed."
Given the distancing and use of the phrase "protest situation," Inner City Press asked Haq if it wasn't actually a situation of Syria civilians trying to get information to the UN, including holding S.O.S. signs asking for help. Haq replied, There was a protest situation that had developed.... People were concerned about their lives and their safety.. The violence was not witnessed directly by UN."
While the duty of a UN assessment mission passing through is certainly different than of UN peacekeepers, say, in Rwanda or Srebrenica, or more recently Abyei and Southern Kordofan in Sudan, it seems strange -- or "troubling," the word Secretary General Ban Ki-moon used Monday to answer Inner City Press' question about Ban's quoting of Assad that military operations had stopped -- that the UN would emphasize it didn't witness the deaths and wasn't "directly" involved.
We will pursue this -- watch this site.
