At UN,
DRC Sexual
Abuse Ladsous
Covered UP
Privatized by
UNCA
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, April
28 -- Why do
some events or
speakers
inside the UN
building get
shunted off
into a private
club, not
filmed or
webcast by UN
Television,
while others
are in public?
On April 29,
there are open
UN Press
Briefing Room
press
conferences by
two
governments --
Ukraine at
2:30 and
Argentina at
3:30 -- and
one
non-governmental
group, the
opposition
Syrian
Coalition, at
5:30 pm.
This last,
because not by
a government,
needed to be
sponsored by a
government and
was: by the UK
Mission to the
UN. Similarly
earlier
this week
there was a
press
conference
about how to
better select
the next
Secretary
General,
sponsored by
Liechtenstein.
Why then would
a noted
Congolese
doctor,
describing
sexual abuse
in Eastern
Congo --
something that
the UN and its
head of
Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous helped cover up in the
case of over
100 rapes by
the Congolese
Army in Minova
in November
2012 -- be
shunted off
into the
private club
of the
so-called UN
Correspondents
Association,
publicized
only to those
who pay UNCA
money?
More
troublingly,
UNCA and its
board members
have tried to
get the
investigative
Press, which
along with the
new Free
UN Coalition
for Access
challenged
and still
challenges
Ladsous on his
cover up of
rapes in
Darfur as well
as Minova,
thrown out of
the UN.
Is this the
right venue,
including on
the criteria
of trying to
make the
information
widely
available?
If any member
state asked
for the UN
Press Briefing
Room, the
Congolese
doctor and his
two
co-panelists
could hold
their press
conference
open to all,
webcast to the
world. Was no
country
willing to do
it? (Ladsous
refused to
answer Inner
City Press'
question about
what UN
Peacekeeping
and MONUSCO
did for the
doctor's
clinic, when
the government
of Joseph
Kabila froze
its bank
account, video
here).
Did
UNCA, now the
UN's
Censorship
Alliance,
not explain
this? We may
have more on
this - after
covering the
Security
Council's
simultaneous meeting
about the
crack down in
Burundi.
Watch this
site.
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