As news of the summary execution of a 12 year old boy by the Sri Lankan Army in May 2009 spreads worldwide, Inner City Press on Wednesday asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman about it, citing Ban’s “two reports and a third one still ongoing.
Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky began with a correction, saying that this third report “is an internal task force looking at how recommendations will be carried out in the UN… it’s not to do with looking into the actual events in Sri Lanka.”
Some wonder how the UN can fully assess its inaction in Sri Lanka without taking into account new evidence of war crimes, including the murder of children in the days the UN was playing middleman for surrenders which ended in summary executions.
Nesirky went on to say “we are aware of the video footage and reports about it,” but he had “no specific comment” beyond Ban’s general statement on the “importance of accountability.”
He again referred to a “national process,” when it is clear to many that has not and will not happen in the run-up to the UN Human Rights Council session in March.
In Sri Lanka, the release of e-mails from Stratfor, the privately owned intelligence company, has sparked a controversy regarding Reuters’ bureau chief there, Bryson Hull.
One 2010 e-mail depicts Hull promoting his “ace-in-the-hole analyst, Reva Bhalla of Stratfor… a consummate information dealer… we had a very successful relationship during the end of the war in Sri Lanka.”
Groundviews has been asking Hull to explain the e-mail. (Inner City Press has learned from some Hull reports in the past, for example in 2012 on the Maldives.) Hull has replied, among other things, that Reva Bhalla "was quoted by name in a Reuters story.”
That would be far better than Reuters’ UN bureau, whose chief Louis Charbonneau in 2012 played a leading role in a campaign to try to oust Inner City Press first from the UN Correspondents Association then from the UN as a whole.
Triggering the campaign was a story Inner City Press wrote about Sri Lanka, war crimes and conflicts of interest – click here for the account of the UK-based Sri Lanka campaign, chaired by Kofi Annan’s former communications chief Edward Mortimer.
Most troubling, when the UNCA proceeding Reuters’ Charbonneau was pushing led to Inner City Press receiving death threats from extremist supporters of Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa government, Charbonneau refused to stop or even suspend the proceedings. “Go to the New York Police Department,” he said dismissively.
The campaign only stopped when Inner City Press requested then obtained documents from Voice of America, which reflected among other things Reuters support for VOA’s June 20 request to the UN to “review” Inner City Press’ accreditation, and Reuters contemplating a (SLAPP) lawsuit against Inner City Press.
Inner City Press wrote several times to the top editors at Reuters, Stephen J. Adler, Walden Siew, and Paul Ingrassia, trying to make them aware of the death threats that were triggered by the actions of their UN bureau chief.
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