As UN Spins Genocide, Its 1999 Rwanda Review Omitted Herve Ladsous, His July 15, 1994 Memo Here

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 15 -- After two days of Rwanda genocide revisionism at the UN, on the afternoon of January 15 the UN emailed to the Press a copy of its"Independent Inquiry 1999 Report on UN Actions in Rwanda."

  In that review, listed interviewees included survivor and current Rwanda foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo and the former Permanent Representatives of New Zealand (Colin Keating) and Nigeria (Ibrahim Gambari). 

  But for France, neither the former Permanent Representative Jean-Bernard Merimee nor the Deputy Permanant Representative Herve Ladsous -- now the head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

  Ladsous should have been interviewed -- click here for an internal memo reflecting his activity in the Security Council on Rwanda.

  Now that current French Permanent Representative GerardAraud is shouting criticism of the Press publishing documents (after his Mission refused to comment on them, only said that their publication would be a "hostile act"), what of this one? 

   At Tuesday's UN press conference ostensibly about the Rwanda genocide of 1994, no questions were taken around what actually happened then. France's Operation Turquoise, which helped the genocidaires escape into Eastern Congo, was not addressed.

  Nor was the shorter but even more telling Operation Amaryllis, conducted by France in Rwanda during the crucial six days between April 8 and April 14, 1994. 

  French troops swept in from Gabon and Bangui -- ironic, that -- and evacuated not only French nationals but also the close associates of the genocidaires, such as the wife of genocide leading president Habyarimana.

  The French troops used UN vehicles of the UNAMIR mission, echoed just last Friday to some by the participation of UN vehicles for the MONUSCO mission in demonstrations in Eastern Congo celebrating the false rumor of the death of Rwanda's president.

  French Colonel Jean Balch's assessment -- which in fairness we note the French parliamentary report claimed was strictly personal -- was that "there was nothing to hint at a RPF victory at that moment, the FAR [government, pro-genocide] resisted quite reasonable the thrust of the Inkotanyi [RFP]." Assemble Nationale, Enquete Tome 1, Pg. 263.

  This, some say, found an echo as recently as June 12, 2013, when France's current Permanent Representative to the UN Gerard Araud told the Assemble Nationale, "Cette région est le théâtre de jeux géopolitiques complexes propres à l’Afrique et dont souffrent surtout les populations civiles. Le Rwanda – qui est un peu la Prusse de la région – poursuit son avancée face à une RDC totalement incapable et inepte" -- that is, calling Rwanda "the Prussia of the region." Click here for that.

  Despite talk of "lessons learned," with quotes such as this and the current leadership of UN peacekeeping, it is unclear what the UN has learned, no matter how many events on genocides it holds and tightly controls.

  On January 14, the first question was given automatically to the United Nations Correspondents Association, a group whose leadership reported little for example during the slaughter in Sri Lanka in 2009. Then UNCA screened a Sri Lanka government film denying war crimes, and tried to censor critical Press coverage of it. (Under the questioner, Pam Falk of CBS, UNCA has reformed nothing, not even pledging not to try to get journalists thrown out of the UN and to function, in essence, as the UN's Censorship Alliance.)

  In the mere three UN-wide questions before Dallaire's remarks -- Gulf media, AFP and finally Inner City Press -- the question about France once again taking sides, in December 2013 in Central African Republic was deferred until next Monday.

  It can be rightly be concluded, including in light of Ban Ki-moon's post Sri Lanka failure "Rights Up Front" plan, that little has been learned at or about the UN. The censors' circle of self-congratulations continue. For now. Watch this site.

   

On Rwanda at UN, Herve Ladsous in 1994 Protected Genocidaires, Now Seeks Drones & Lapdogs, AFP & Reuters

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 6 -- Nineteen years ago today above Kigali, a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down, setting off a 100 day genocide.

Several events by the UN this month will echo the “never again” tagline. 

  But it is significant that the current head of UN Peacekeeping is Herve Ladsous, who as France's Deputy Permanent Representative in 1994 argued to the UN Security Council in favor of helping the genocidaires escape into Eastern Congo.

  Now, after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2001 accepted Ladsous as a last minute substitute for Jerome Bonnafont as the fourth Frenchman in a row to head DPKO, Ladsous has lobbied for drones to oversee Eastern Congo; he has stonewalled on at least 126 rapes committed by the Congolese Army, his partners.

  When Ladsous held his first press conference as head of DPKO on October 13, 2011, Inner City Press asked him about his past on Rwanda. Video here, from Minute 22:50.

  All Ladsous would say that day was that was history, that was the past. But is it only the past?

  Alongside Ladsous' public dodging, Agence France Presse on one of the management boards of which Ladsous once served and which is 41% funded by the French government,began to seek the expulsion of Inner City Press, first from the so-called UN Correspondents Association (more appropriately, the UN's Censorship Alliance) then from the UN as a whole.

  In fact, AFP's Tim Witcher has complained to the UN not only about Inner City Press calling him, in response to his hissing “lies and distortion,” a lapdog for Ladsous, but even about Inner City Press' question to Ladsous about Eastern Congo.

  Is that consistent with AFP's or any non-corrupt media's policies, to seek to get other journalists thrown out for the substantive questions they ask? We aim to find out.

We are also pursuing how and why Inner City Press' office was raided by the UN on March 18, and photos taken which were then passed, just after Ban's spokesperson's office was asked about the raid, to BuzzFeed, through an anonymous “Concerned UN Reporter” e-mail address.

As to Ladsous, once UNCA was conducting a kangaroo court proceeding against Inner City Press in May 2012, Ladsous on May 29 simple refused to answer any Inner City Press question. See YouTube video, here.

He has continued that, for example at the Security Council stakeout on November 27, December 7 and December 18, which he directed his spokesman to seize the UNTV microphone to try to avoid Inner City Press' question on the 126 rapes in Minova by the Congolese Army.

  In March 2013 after Inner City Press asked the question, without meaningful answer, to Ban Ki-moon, Ladsous's DPKO spoon-fed half an answer to AFP's Witcher andReuters' Michelle Nichols (who absurdly but typically characterizes such spoon-feeding as a Reuters “scoop”). Is this, and the repeated filing of false complaints, consistent with Reuters' policy? Stephen J. Adler never answered.

  It was the next day, March 8, that Witcher cut into a conversation Inner City Press was having with another journalist and hissed, “lies and distortion.” Inner City Press replied, Lapdog, and sarcastically complimented Nichols on her scoop.

Cynically and in bad faith, the two went that afternoon and filed coordinated complaints, even claiming to be afraid from a verbal disagreement with Witcher instigated. Reuters more generally including its UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau jumped in. That the UN has no rules on false complaints, or due process, has only made it worse.

But Ladsous loves it -- since then he's again tried to hand “scoops” to AFP, finally falling back on the UN's own UN Radio. And the UN and its Department of Public Information (and Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson's office) have put up with this.

So what to make of their statements this month about “never again” and the Rwandan genocide? Not much. Watch this site.