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UN's Rwanda Prosecutor Says He Cleared Karenzi,
Contra Navi Pillay, No News On Nepali Generals
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
December 12 -- The UN system's
approach to Rwanda was shown this week to be in disarray. The
prosecutor of the
International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, Hassan B. Jallow, told the
Press on
Friday that his Office had been asked about the service with the UN
Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur by Rwandan General Karenzi
Karake, indicted for
war crimes by a judge in Spain. Jallow said his answer had been that he
had no
case against Karenzi, who as a consequence is still in his UN job.
But on
December 9 in the same room, High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi
Pillay had
told the Press that her Office had raised issues of war crimes by
Karenzi
Karake while with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RFP), well as getting
several
Nepali generals removed from peacekeeping missions due to their
involvement in
disappearances. Inner City Press had asked Ms. Pillay what the UN does
about
abuses among its peacekeepers, and was told on December 10 that further
information was being sought from Ms. Pillay, which two days later has
not been
provided.
So the UN
system's top human rights official is taking credit for raising war
crimes
issues about a top UN peacekeeping general, while a top UN system
prosecutor first
says he doesn't recognize the general's name, then says he cleared him.
Jallow with another UN prosecutor, General
Karenzi and Ms. Pillay not shown
Meanwhile,
the UN's Congo sanctions committee has issued a report linking the
RPF-successor
Rwandan government with the rebels in Congo led by Tutsi general
Laurent
Nkunda, while saying on the other hand that the Congolese government
army is in
league with the Hutu FDLR rebels.
News analysis:
Could the ICTR's refusal to
prosecute any RFP abusers, and UN Peacekeeping's failure to heed what
the UN
Human Rights Commissioner says she raised about RFP general Karenzi,
have played
a role in creating the atmosphere in which the Rwandan support of
Nkunda
described in the report takes place? The UN doesn't report on itself,
at least
not on issues like this. But it should.
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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