On
Sri Lanka,
Holmes Claims
UN Did
What It Could,
Withheld Death
Figures
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
November 13 --
The UN's push
back against
its own
report on
its actions
and inactions
in Sri Lanka
in 2009
began on
Tuesday. John
Holmes, former
chief of the
UN Office for
the
Coordination
of
Humanitarian
Affairs, said
that the UN
did all it
could to
protect
civilians.
But
as Inner City
Press
exposed in
2009, Holmes'
OCHA withheld
and buried
a first list
of 2,683
civilians
killed.
The UN did not
even call for
a ceasefire.
When
Holmes left
the UN for a
sinecure in
the English
countryside,
Inner
City Press
asked him
about Sri
Lanka, and
found him at
least
partially in denial.
Click here for
that.
At
the UN's
November 13
noon briefing,
Inner City
Press asked
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon's
spokesman
Martin Nesirky
to confirm
that
second-string
(and
moonlighting)
report writer
Charles Petrie
is now
in New York to
present the
report to Ban
and make it
public.
Nesirky
replied
that Petrie
will meet Ban
"tomorrow
morning" and
that the
report should
be made public
"soon after
that." Video
here, from
Minute 9.
After
5 pm on
November 13
the UN put
online Ban's
schedule for
November 14,
with Petrie
listed at 9:30
am. But the
day's Media
Alert does not
list the
meeting -
although it did
on November 12
list Ban's
meeting
with another
UN official,
Romano Prodi.
To that
meeting,
non-UN
photographers
were allowed.
But
Inner City
Press is
informed that,
at least for
now,
Wednesday's
Petrie meeting
with Ban will
be only for
the UN's own
UN Photo and
UNTV units.
While a small
example of a
larger
problem,
wasn't the
whole issue
that the UN
needed to be
subject to
scrutiny
beyond
itself? Watch
this site.
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