Inner City Press

Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

These reports are usually available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis

Google
  Search innercitypress.com Search WWW (censored?)

In Other Media-eg AJE, FP, Georgia, NYT Azerbaijan, CSM Click here to contact us     .

,



Follow us on TWITTER

Home -

These reports are usually available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis

CONTRIBUTE

RSS

ICP on YouTube

BloggingHeads.tv

UN: Sri Lanka

VoA: NYCLU

FOIA Finds  

Google, Asked at UN About Censorship, Moved to Censor the Questioner, Sources Say, Blaming UN - Update - Editorial

Support this work by buying this book

Click on cover for secure site orders

also includes "Toxic Credit in the Global Inner City"
 

 

 


Community
Reinvestment

Bank Beat

Freedom of Information
 

How to Contact Us



Sri Lanka Banning Families of Disappeared in North OK with Ban's UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 7 -- When the Sri Lankan government bans families of the disappeared from traveling from Vavuniya to Colombo to petition the UN office there, one might expect the UN to be concerned, at least as much as some member states, if not as “deeply concerned” as about, say, North Korea.

  But as to Ban Ki-moon's UN, you'd be wrong.

  Thirteen days after Ban accepted a “whitewash” report about Sri Lanka and went on to praise it in Geneva, without releasing the report, Inner City Press asked Ban's chief spokesperson Martin Nesirky:

Inner City Press: There was a group of families of disappeared people seeking to go to Colombo, it said to actually go to meet the UN country team with information, see about their relatives, and they were stopped by the Government in Vavuniya, not allowed to reach Colombo or to speak to the UN, and I am wondering if the UN [is] saying that they shouldn’t have been blocked. Is the UN aware of this? Do they believe people should be able to pass this whatever information they have to the UN, and what’s going to happen with them?

Spokesperson Nesirky: Well, there would be other conduits to be able to provide information if people feel they have information that they wish to hand over to the United Nations. There are other ways to do it if they cannot reach Colombo. So I am sure that that would be possible, to be able to receive information and not just via the country team in the country.

  From this answer it sounds like blocking or banning the families of the disappeared up in Vavuniya, keeping them from access to the UN Country Team, is fine with the UN.

  What ARE these “other conduits”? What was in the “whitewash” report that Ban praised in Geneva? There are many questions about Ban Ki-moon and Sri Lanka and they should be asked and answered. Maybe Team Ban will again find a way to give the answers to other, friendlier scribes. Watch this site.

Share |

* * *

These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for Sept 26, 2011 New Yorker on Inner City Press at UN

Click for  BloggingHeads.tv re Libya, Sri Lanka, UN Corruption

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com

UN Office: S-253, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439

Reporter's mobile (and weekends): 718-716-3540

Google
  Search innercitypress.com  Search WWW (censored?)

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

            Copyright 2006-2013 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com