On
DR Congo, HRW
Buries Mistake
as France
Dumped Ladsous
on UN
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, July
23 -- After
Human Rights
Watch was forced to
append a
telling
correction
Tuesday
morning to its
report
focused almost
entirely on
the M23
pumped and
tweeted out
during Monday
afternoon's
Security
Council
consultations
about the
Democratic
Republic of
the
Congo, HRW
did not
announce the
correction by
the same media
it
publicized the
report.
Ken
Roth, for
example,
tweeted the
report, but
not the
correction.
His UN
lobbyist Philippe
Bolopion,
previously of
Le Monde and
France 24, was
nowhere to be
seen.
But at the
State
Department in
Washington,
the
report but not
correction was
asked about,
and a canned
answer was
read out by
spokesperson
Jen Psaki.
This was
reported by Reuters
--
but not the
HRW correction
they had
purported to
ask about at
the UN.
This
is the machine.
While
Rwanda's UN
Ambassador
Eugene Richard
Gasana spoke
of HRW in
front of
the Security
Council on
Tuesday
morning, it
was superseded
even for
those who
purported to
ask him
questions by
Psaki.
Gasana has
since
said: "This
does not help
to find the
solution to
the DRC. This
has become
[HRW's]
standard
statement to
describe us
this way.
However, we
will not
tolerate it.
HRW insists on
a consistent
international
conspiracy on
cover-up of
FDLR of what
they have done
in the past
and what they
keep on doing,
which is why
they want to
make Rwanda
continuously
guilty through
M23."
Human
Rights Watch,
despite its
name, did not
in its report
on the DRC
even
mention the UN's
supposed Human
Rights Due
Diligence
Policy.
This is
supposed to
prohibit UN
support to
units like the
DRC Army's 391st
Battalion,
implicated in
135 rapes in
Minova in
November and
desecration of
corpses this
month. UN
Peacekeeping
chief Herve
Ladsous,
the fourth
Frenchman in a
row to hold
the post,
decided to
continue
supporting the
391st
Battalion, and
HRW said
nothing.
At
day's end, HRW
tweeted out a
"Storify"
about its day
in
human rights,
which gushed
about the
report and
Psaki's
comment, with
no mention of
the correction.
The machine
goes on.
A
former State
Department
official
Richard
Johnson
earlier this
year
penned an
analysis of
HRW and
Rwanda, with
this section
particularly
on France:
"HRW
failed to
mention and
thus let off
the hook those
foreign
officials,
most notably
among the
French, who
face much
graver
allegations of
active
complicity in
the
genocide...
HRW failed to
mention that a
significant
cohort of
French
researchers
had been
working hard
since
1994 to expose
French
officials’
complicity in
the genocide."
The
current chief
of UN
Peacekeeping
Herve Ladsous
was France's
Deputy
Permanent
Representative
at the UN
during the
1994 genocide,
and
argued
for the escape
of the genocidaires
into Eastern
Congo. How
was
he allowed,
after being
passed over
and rejected
during the
recruitments
of Jean-Marie
Guehenno and
Alain Le Roy,
to get
in this
time under Ban
Ki-moon?
How can this
Ladsous be in
charge of UN
soldiers,
including an
all-African
"Intervention
Brigade," in
Eastern
Congo now? How
can Ladsous be
allowed to openly refuse Press
questions
about this?
Watch this
site.
, 
