In DC, Crimes of French SNCF Detailed, Sovereign Immunity Opposed

By Matthew Russell Lee

WASHINGTON DC, November 16 -- From 1941 through 1944 French state-owned railroad company SNCF transported 76,000 people to concentration camps -- over 11,000 of them children -- charging the Nazi-controlled government third class fares although the accommodations were in cattle cars.

Now when SNCF is sued for these crimes against humanity, the company raises the defense of soverign immunity. The logic is that since Nicholas Sarkozy can't be sued by his victims including recent ones from weapons drops in Libya and reprisals in Cote d'Ivoire, neither can SNCF be sued, even by Holocaust survivors.

Wednesday on Capitol Hill in the Rayburn House Office Building, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs heard from Holocaust survivors, in support of H.R. 1193, the Holocaust Rail Justice Act, which would prevent foreign sovereign immunity from being raised as a defense by the French rail company SNCF in a class action law suit brought against them by Holocaust survivors.

The Committee heard, this is not the type of situation foreign sovereign immunity was ever meant to apply to. Chairperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen moved things along, so the Committee got testimony from Leo Bretholz, who survived only by jumping from a SNCF train bound for Auschwitz carrying one thousand other victims. Later he settled in Baltimore.

Bretholz said SNCF was paid by the Nazis "per head and per kilometer." He submitted into the record an invoice SNCF submitted "after the Nazis were gone." He described how families were split up. For the whole trip, SNCF gave "one piece of triangle cheese, one piece of bread and no water."

An elderly woman on crutches told him, "You must do it, if you get out, maybe you can tell the story." He managed to bend the bars of the windows of the cattle car and got out. Of SNCF convoy number 42, only five survived.

For SNCF, he said, "it's all about money." Seventy years is enough, he concluded. Yes, it is. And what does the French government say?

In DC, UN Funding Questioned, As Pascoe Lame Ducks on Palestine, Ban Dodges on Haiti & Ladsous, Goes Social

By Matthew Russell Lee

WASHINGTON* DC, September 13, updated -- With UN Peacekeepers in Haiti charged with sexual abuse and fathering children with under-aged Haitian girls and little transparency about how public money is spent, on consultants and flying part time envoys around, on Capitol Hill today Congress members are putting forward their bill to make funding of the UN a la carte, i.e. based on performance.

According to the sponsors, the bill includes "opposition to new or expanded peacekeeping missions until reforms are instituted, including the adoption of a universal code of conduct." And see updated bill summary, here, esp. Title X.

This comes as Haitian elected officials move to strip the UN of its immunity after Uruguayan UN peacekeepers engaged sexual abuse, and barely pay child support for their offspring with under-aged Haitian girls.

At the UN on September 12 Inner City Press posed the question to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky: "I wanted to ask here at Headquarters, is it the UN’s position that the payment of child support after sex by peacekeepers with underage people in the countries in which they are serving, is sufficient, is that a lack of impunity?"

Nesirky did not answer at the time, but after Inner City Press left the UN and New York inserted into the transcript "that the investigation had in fact concluded and that the issue of financial support for the mother and the child by the soldier involved was one of the outcomes of this process, independent of whatever other punishment is meted out."

But as appears to be the case with Sri Lankan peacekeepers merely "repatriated" after documentation of sexual abuse of minors in Haiti, there appears to have been, nor that there will be, any additional punishment.

Even in this context many have mocked the idea of conditions on UN peacekeeping and political missions and a la carte funding. The UN seems to be going on as ever, with simultaneous canned social media responses from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at #AskTheSG and some in the UN Correspondents' Association saying they'll "urgently" meet on a draft statement to journalists about what they should publish, and who and what they should use as sources, explicitly in response to complaints from a particular country's mission to the UN.

(That would be France, which has controlled UN Peacekeeping during all this, and whose new DPKO head Herve Ladsous was chief of staff to French minister Aliot-Marie as she flew Air Ben Ali to Tunisia -- none of which Ban seems to have reviewed or yet answered for.)

But given the make-up in Congress, and President Barack Obama's recent move rightward on issues ranging from the environment, where he kiboshed the proposed ozone rules, and tax cuts, complacency at and around the UN may be misguided.

For now the speakers in favor of the legislation, H.R. 2829, are all Republicans, including Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, Dan Burton, Peter Roskam of Illinois, Steve Chabot and Jean Schmidt of Ohio, Scott Garret of New Jersey, Michael Grimm of New York, and Robert Dold and Allen West of Florida.

But already the US Mission to the UN's new Ambassador on Management is criticized a proposed 3% pay raise at the UN -- only for Professional level staff, Inner City Press notes, and not the General Service staff that would need it more -- and has called for more transparency at the UN Development Program.

Simultaneously, sources tell Inner City Press, the Administration is taking a hard look at their main American Under Secretary General Lynn Pascoe of the Department of Political Affairs. Wikileaks has released a cable summarizing a US Ambassador Rice meeting with Pascoe at which he claimed credit for working with the government of Zimbabwe. Rice asked pointedly about the wisdom of throwing Robert Mugabe a lifeline.

Since then, Inner City Press has told, Rice has indicated that meeting with Pascoe is not for her, and largely left it to deputy Rosemary DiCarlo. Now DPA sources say Pascoe is a lame duck. At a press briefing at the UN on September 12, Pascoe repeatedly (lame) ducked and weaved past questions about the request for state status by Palestine, another topic at Tuesday's Capitol Hill hearing. Watch this site.

From the UN's transcript of its September 12, 2011 noon briefing:

Question: I wanted to ask you, all these developments in Haiti while you were away about, multiple allegations various kinds of abuse. A senator there, Senator Latortue is putting forward a bill to say that the UN’s immunity should be limited to within the scope of its mandate and that otherwise including UN peacekeepers and UN staff should be subject to the Haitian justice system. I wanted to know, what the UN thinks of that type of a proposal. Is a country within its rights to, as part of the status-of-forces agreement or otherwise, hold peacekeepers subject to the justice of the country in which they are operating?

Spokesperson Nesirky: Well, the Mission, like any other Mission, operates under Security Council resolution that governs its work and, therefore, any adjustments to that would need to be discussed by the Security Council. But the question of impunity there or anywhere else is obviously crucial. And we know you will have heard what has been said in recent days and weeks on this topic; the allegations in Haiti as you know, they are being looked into and taken extremely seriously.

Inner City Press: I know that the allegations with the male, Uruguay is looking into it very closely. There seems to be no dispute that several Uruguayan peacekeepers have left behind children with underage women in that area of Haiti. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t misunderstand it; it seems to be saying that the UN system thought that the payment of child support was a sufficient response. It seemed…

Spokesperson: “It” being who?

Inner City Press: Say again?

Spokesperson: “It” being who?

Inner City Press: It was said from this podium and it was said by MINUSTAH, so I wanted to ask here at Headquarters, is it the UN’s position that the payment of child support after sex by peacekeepers with underage people in the countries in which they are serving, is sufficient, is that a lack of impunity?

Spokesperson Nesirky: I need to check on that, Matthew, I need to check on precisely what was said where and when.

[The Spokesperson later stated that the investigation had in fact concluded and that the issue of financial support for the mother and the child by the soldier involved was one of the outcomes of this process, independent of whatever other punishment is meted out. The soldier had acknowledged the relationship in the course of the investigation.]

* - with reporting from Washington DC.

U.S. "Deadbeat-Gate" Draws Midnight Clarification from UN's Ban Ki-moon: He Said It, But...

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/dcban5media031209.html

CAPITOL HILL, March 12 -- As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning, ranking member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen emerged and told the Press that Ban "used the word deadbeat when it came to describing the United States... unbelievable."

Minutes later, Ban stopped and spoke to the three reporters present, including Inner City Press, all three of whom had tape recorders running. He was asked, did you use the word 'deadbeat'? Inner City Press asked, "Ros-Lehtinen seemed to say you did."

"Yes I did, I did," Ban replied, and then smiled impishly. His spokesperson, who also tape recorded the exchange, then said Ban had to go. He rushed away down the hallway surrounded by aides.

At least two stories were written. Then, past midnight, Ban's Spokesperson's office issued a midnight "clarification" --

Subj: To clarify any misunderstanding about the Secretary General
From: unspokesperson-donotreply@un.org
To: Inner City Press [et al.]
Sent: 3/12/2009 12:19:10 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time

The Secretary-General said: "The United States generously supports the work of the UN , both in assessed and voluntary contributions".

The Secretary-General also added that while the United States is the most generous contributor to the United Nations, it is also the largest debtor, with more than one billion dollars of arrears owed to the organization.

The Secretary-General enjoys an excellent working relationship with the United States and appreciates the many ways that it supports the United Nations.

New York, 11 March 2009

One problem with this clarification is that it does not address the point raised by Rep. Ros-Lehtinen and the stories, Ban's use of the term deadbeat. Ban's Spokesperson was there with tape recorder running. Ban said that the U.S. has $1 billion in arrears to the UN, "soon to be" $1.6 billion.

The irony is that Ban is widely viewed in the UN as, if anything, too pro-United States. Another Republican who spoke to the Press outside the meeting on Wednesday, Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, said he prefers Ban to Kofi Annan, noting that Ban supported Israel by speaking about and publicizing Hamas' rocket fire.

One interpretation of Ban's laughing statement that he called the U.S. a deadbeat is that Ban was trying to show some "street cred," that he is not in the pocket of the Americans. The Democratic chairman of the subcommittee on international organizations, Massachusetts' William Delahunt, told the Press he think Ban is right, that the U.S. should pay all its arrears before it criticized the UN.

In this context, it appears to some far to defensive and craven for Ban's Office to issue this midnight clarification. "If you said it, you said it," one source argued. "Stand behind it. And if you put out a clarification, at least address that quote you are trying to clarify."

Ban's promised monthly press conference, already delayed, is now scheduled for Thursday at 11 a.m.. Inner City Press is still in Washington and cannot ask these questions. Most current UN correspondents, it seems, would agree with Ban's word choice if not his midnight retreat. Will the issue come up and be clarified by the man himself? Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/dcban5media031209.html