In DR Congo, As UN Confirms Destruction of Telecom Tower, Reuters Anonymous UN Quote on M23 Stands?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 23 -- After the Congolese Army destroyed a Vodacom telecommunications tower, on Thursday Inner City Press asked the UN to confirm and comment on it. 

  Isn't that an attack impacting civilians, including for example their ability to report rapes like those in Minova and Walikale before that?

  More than 24 hours later, the UN sent this to Inner City Press: 

Answers to questions on DR Congo: MONUSCO can confirm that one telecommunication tower in the Munigi area appears to have been destroyed.

  But no comment on its impact on civilians. At Friday's noon briefing, video here from Minute 10:15, Inner City Press asked the UN's outgoing deputy spokesperson Eduardo Del Buey about the answer, when Inner City Press and another journalist asked UN Peacekeeping acting chief Edmond Mulet Thursday if the M23 rebels had entered the security zone established around Goma.

  "No," Mulet said. "Just mortars." He went on to refer to the separate "red line" established when M23 agreed in Kampala to pull out of Goma. (The portion of that agreement that gave M23 one third of the security force at the Goma airport remains unimplemented.)

  But later on Thursday, the wire service Reuters reported "a senior U.N. official, who asked not to be named, said that on Thursday the rebels entered a security zone surrounding Goma" -- which Mulet, the acting chief of DPKO, had just denied. Inner City Press and the other journalist waited to ask Mulet again, and got the same answer.

  So who is this "senior UN official who asked not to be named"? In UN Peacekeeping, only Herve Ladsous, long absent from UN Headquarters, is senior to and could over-rule Mulet.

  Ladsous has in the past spoon-fed answers of dubious veracity to this same Reuters UN bureau bragging for example about the Congolese Army imposing accountability for the 135 rapes in Minova in November 2012.

   But with only a few arrests for the 135 rapes, Ladsous' DPKO continues supporting the 391st Battalion, even as it is now implicated in corpse desecration.

That the UN would try to use Reuters, willingly, resonates with a documented instance in June 2012 when Reuters UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau gave to UN official Stephane Dujarric an internal UNCA anti-Press document,three minutes after saying he would not do so. Story here,audio here, document here, in which Charbonneau tells Dujarric, "You didn't get this from me."

  So is Reuters' "senior UN official who asked not to be named" someone junior to Mulet, or as another journalist suggested, no one at all? 

  On Friday, Del Buey said he knew what Mulet had said, and has "seen other reports." He said he'd have to check. But today is his last day at the UN (the Free UN Coalition for Access wished him well, video here at Minute 9:55).  So we'll see. Watch this site.

   

UN Denies DRC Attack on Vodacom Tower, Accuses M23 of Firing into Rwanda: False False Flag

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 22 -- There is renewed fighting outside Goma between the Congolese Army and the M23 rebels. But what does the UN say about it?

At Thursday's noon briefing, Inner City Press asked outgoing deputy spokesperson Eduardo Del Buey about reports that the Congolese Army shelled a Vodacom telephone tower, and shot into Rwanda. Del Buey said he did not have that information and invited Inner City Press to "call MONUSCO." Video here, from Minute 9:25.

Just after the noon briefing, Inner City Press asked the UN Peacekeeping officials who gave an unscheduled briefing to the Security Council. Officer in Charge Edmond Mulet told Inner City Press M23 was attacking the MONUSCO force. Jack Christofides said his information was that it was M23 that fired into Rwanda.

This last seemed so strange that Inner City Press waited for the Security Council's 3 pm meeting to ask Mulet about it, on the record, as DPKO's acting chief while Herve Ladsous is on ongoing vacation. Mulet repeated the statement: that the UN believes M23 shot into Rwanda and then blamed it on FARDC, the Congolese Army.

"False flag?" Inner City Press asked. Mulet nodded. He again said he had no information about a telephone tower.

The tower is important, in part because the UN said a lot about using telecommunications to protect women from abuse, after the UN stood by and allowed the rapes in Walikale. US Ambassador Rice, now National Security Adviser in Washington, was critical of the UN's inaction.

So if a telecom tower has been destroyed, isn't it of interest?

Also on communications and Del Buey's advice to "call MONUSCO," it was for precisely that the the Free UN Coalition for Access has insisted with the UN Department of Public Information that it comply with what it promised: UN system telephones in the so-called "focus booths," on which you can call the Peacekeeping missions as a local call.

But DPI says it must give out the focus booths to media - while it gives three rooms to its UNCA Alliance. What about helping journalists cover the UN? What about DPKO coming forward with information about its claims about M23? Or is this just an information campaign in the run up to the Intervention Brigade? Watch this site.

Update of 3:35 pm - Inner City Press has been told there will be ANOTHER "Any Other Business" session on MONUSCO later this afternoon, and that a "Congolese minister called Ladsous or Mulet today."  Again we ask: run-up to Intervention Brigade?

Footnote: One observer joked that a breathless, error-filled press release from Human Rights Watch should be expected about now. Then again, they are busy issuing (and withholding) a study on Liberia, and promoting a story about Syria which mistakenly calls what was not adopted Wednesday a "resolution," when it was only a draft press statement. But who needs facts, right?