UN GATE, June 12 – Never again? How hollow
is the UN Security Council's hand-wringing over genocide,
from a body complicit in both Rwanda in 1994 and
Srebrenica in 1995, and failing on Ukraine and Gaza?
On June 12 the UNSC met to debate the
future of the International Residual Mechanism for
Criminal Tribunals — the body that was supposed to close
the books on the worst atrocities in Europe and Africa
since World War II. While the UN casts itself as
trying to do the right thing, it was complicit in the
genocide in Rwanda - not only did the UNSC vote to remove
troops and thereby allow it, a remaining UNDP staffer used
his white UN four-by-four at part of the genocide.
The UN's failure in Srebrenica is better
known - but the UN has cited immunity for both, as for
bringing cholera to Haiti.
On June 12, Rwanda's Justice Minister
Emmanuel Ugirashebuja flew in to argue that the archives
of the Rwanda tribunal should stay where they are "most
historically meaningful." That is what the UN has become
under Antonio Guterres: a museum.
Will the Next SG - the current candidates
have refused to answer the Press' questionnaire on these
topics - close the doors for good, or move it out of New
York? A presenter noted, accurately, that the atrocities
"resulted from organized plans by senior leaders who
abused their authority" and that "hate speech and
propaganda laid the foundation." True.
Also true: the UN's own response —
paralysis, euphemism, institutional cowardice — laid
another kind of foundation. The IRMCT's mandate was
extended again. Competing calls for "closure" versus
"continued support to national authorities" filled the
chamber. What was not debated: why the Council's permanent
members, who have veto power and knew what was happening
in real time in both Rwanda and Bosnia, have never been
held to any standard of accountability for their own role
in those failures. And now, Ukraine and Gaza;
Iran.
US Ambassador Mike Waltz, who has done
nothing the UN's censorship and ban of Press, has been out
of town, skydiving in France, lavishing praise on the UAE
as "Little Sparta" without mentions its role supporting
Sudanese militia. Mike Waltz paid to print up MUNGA - Make
the UN Great Again - again? - caps, presumably with US
taxpayer money, as he is presumably paying the UN to use
its roof on July 4 for a party. Inner City Press' FOIA
request to the State Department is being
delayed.
The UN is dying; Friday tellingly the
debate was about where to store the
archives.
Inner City Press, still banned from being
able to cover the UNSC from the press stakeout as it did,
live tweeting as it now live tweets the courts, is ramping
up its coverage of these UN events, good and mostly bad
and ugly, as the race or fix for Next SG starts up. Watch
this site
