UNITED
NATIONS, May
26 -- At the
African Union
in Addis
Ababa, UN
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon has
issued
read-outs of
meetings with
the foreign
ministers of
Norway,
Mauritania and
the US (well,
Secretary of
State
John Kerry),
and with
Burundi's
President
Pierre
Nkurunziza.
Of
Nkurunziza,
the UN says
they
"discussed the
political
situation
in Burundi and
the possible
implications
of the draft
media law."
This
last phrase is
vague;
one notes that
at the UN in
New York
Ban
Ki-moon has
agreed to a
Media Access
Guidelines
which among
other
things reduced
media access
to the
Security
Council and
purports to
ban any
substantive or
critical
fliers, even
on
journalists'
office
doors.
At
the last UN
noon briefing
on May 24,
Inner City
Press asked
Ban's
deputy
spokesperson
Eduardo Del
Buey if Ban's
office had
agreed to
the UN Media
Access
Guidelines as
shown to the
Free UN
Coalition for
Access on May
20. Yes,
Del Buey said,
on UN
Television.
Click here for
that.
What
ARE the
"implications"?
With
Norway's
foreign
minister Espen
Barth Eide,
Ban discussed
not only
Syria but
several
African
issues: "the
situation in
the Great
Lakes, Somalia
and Mali,
including the
deployment of
MINUSMA, the
UN
peacekeeping
mission for
Mali."
Strangely
not
among them was
South Sudan,
where
Norwegian
Hilde Johnson
leads
the UN
Peacekeeping
mission, along
with Herve
Ladsous, and
where
civilians have
been routed in
Pibor and Boma
and where
there are also
serious
attacks on the
independent
media. Click
here for
Inner City
Press coverage
of that,
including on World Press
Freedom Day.
With
Hamadi Ould
Baba Ould
Hamadi, the
Foreign
Minister of
the Islamic
Republic of
Mauritania,
there was no
mention of
Western
Sahara, where
the UN
Peacekeeping
mission under
Herve
Ladsous, the
fourth
Frenchman
in a row to
hold the post,
has no human
rights
monitoring
mechanism.
The
US proposed
such a
mechanism,
then went back
on the
proposal. This
not
surprisingly
was not
mentioned in
Ban's readout
with John
Kerry.
But
one is hoping,
and trying,
that Kerry
when
interviewed
today by
BBC Hardtalk
is asked what
the US has
learned, if
anything, from
the
US-trained
391st Commando
Battalion of
the Congolese
Army being
involved in
135 mass rapes
in Minova on
November 2012.
Watch this
site.
, 
