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In Central Asia, UN Ban Blind to Corruption, Skips Prisoners Rights and Water Wars

UNITED NATIONS, April 3 -- As the UN's Ban Ki-moon traipses Central Asia, what of political prisoners, UN hiring scandals and simmering cross border conflicts? Apparently for the UN Secretary General, these don't exist. Before Ban started his trip, Inner City Press asked why the UN was not even to solve the dam-based conflict between Tajkistan and Uzbekisan. Don't call it a conflict, Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky said. What what should it be called? 
 
     As Inner City Press has reported, Uzbekistan opposes the Tajik dam so much it shut the country's border. Why isn't the vaunted Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia involved?

  A UN source alleging corruption in the UNRCCA notes

On the website of the Center, there is not a single word about the Dam. but there is a tender announcement for the fitness equipment for the gymnasium at the UNRCCA building - the former elite Demiryolchy Hotel. The question is whether the procurement of the fitness equipment is reconciled with the UN budget rules and regulations, or whether it is a good UN background for the unsolved Dam conflict.

http://unrcca.unmissions.org/ the left click Tenders http://unrcca.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4319

At Tnders page you could see translation: The Regional UN Center (UNRCCA) announces the tender: Fitness equipment for the gymnesium)

http://unrcca.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4319&ctl=Details&mid=4408&ItemID=8098

http://unrcca.unmissions.org/portals/unrcca/gym.pdf is set of pictures.

Meanwhile

Miloslav Jenca (Slovakia), SRSG and head of UNRCCA, has published an article “Developments in Central Asia and the role of the UNRCCA” in International Issues & Slovak Foreign Policy AffairsIssue no.02 /2009, Publisher: Research Center of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (RC SFPA)

The curiosity is that it can be read only if the reader would pay 25 Euro (€) in advance (from each the price of Jenca’s article would be taken). Click here. the UN staff in general and of Jenca’s status in particular are not supposed to publish the UN related staff for money (not saying about other connotations).

Turkmenistan would be the first country in the SG tour – 2 April (would SRSG Jenca inform the SG of the fitness equipment tendered – especially of the ball to play at the beach?

  In the Fall of 2009, Inner City Press asked and was given the run-around about a hiring scandal in this Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia. Inner City Press posed this question in writing:

In a message dated 8/27/2009 3:50:47 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, montas [at] un.org writes:
Please refer your DPA questions to Jared Kotler
 
  I've been referred to you for a response to the allegations below concerning hiring in the Regional Center in Turkmenistan (the United Nations Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia).Also, please tell me when Jan Egeland's job with DPA ended, what he did during his tenure and how much he was paid.
 
on the RCPDCA, while here is more to this story, but let's start on deadline with confirmation or denial of the below:
 
During 2005-2007 Mr. Miloslav Jenca, Slovakia , worked in Tashkent as the OSCE Head of Office/OSCE Project Co-coordinator in Uzbekistan together with Ms. Polina Pomogalova , Uzbekistan , as his local general support staff:

http://www.osce.org/uzbekistan/photos.html?lsi=true&src=22&limit=6&pos=36

Mr.Jenca at OSCE, Uzbekistan

http://www.osce.org/documents/eea/2007/10/27048_en.pdf
 

Ms. Polina Pomogalova at OSCE, Uzbekisan, page 3
 

 In December 2007 the UNRCCA ( United Nations Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia) was inaugurated by Lynn Pascoe, DPA in Ashgabat.
  

In April 2008 Mr. Miloslav Jenca was appointed UNRCCA Head and SRSG, (“…Mr.. Jenca, currently the Director of the Office of Slovakia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, recently served as head of mission for the OSCE centre in Tashkent , Uzbekistan …”) 

Soon after this Ms. Polina Pomogalova was appointed the Personal Assistant to the SRSG Jenca at UNRCCA: see the UNRCCA web site:
 
http://unrcca.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1995 

 
“…Ms. Polina Pomogalova, Personal Assistant to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General Ambassador Jenca…”

Question: How could it be that Polina Pomogalova without a single day of the UN experience was shortlisted for an interview by PMSS while other candidates with the extensive UN experience in Central Asia and technically cleared to the positions of this category were not included? How could it be that the UNRCCA interview board recommended exactly Polina Pomogalova? The answer seems clear: she was the protégé of SRSG Jenca and it was he who had arranged everything.

  Again, there is more to this story, but let's start on deadline with what is the UN's / DPA's . the Center's response?

  The majority of the above was simply never responded to, just as the UN's Department of Political Affairs refused to respond to or address nepotism and hiring scandals in its Africa II unit and the Central African Republic. This lack of accountability extends to the UN's approach to human rights.

UN's Ban and Jenca (2d from left) and his delegation, 2008

   As Ban left on April 1, Inner City Press asked his Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq if Ban would visit political prisoners:

Inner City Press: In terms of the Secretary-General’s trip through Central Asia, I’m wondering, various groups, including Human Rights Watch, have said this is an opportunity for him to address issues such as, in Uzbekistan, the failure to prosecute anyone for the Andijon massacre, as well as the abuse of political prisoners, religious minorities and others. What is the place of the issue of human rights in the Secretary-General’s trip, and specifically, is he going to raise Andijon while he is in Uzbekistan?

Associate Spokesperson Haq: I’m not going to get ahead of the Uzbekistan portion of the trip before it happens. What I will say is: it’s always clear whenever the Secretary-General visits countries that human rights, international humanitarian law and other norms are always part of what he discusses with his interlocutors. He certainly plans to do that over the course of his trip to Central Asia. And one of the things that he is going to do in the various countries that he visits is to reach out to civil society. As you know, civil society organizations have been developing in many of these countries. We will provide you with the details of those visits as they transpire. There is nothing really to say about them just yet.

Inner City Press: There are fairly high-profile, what are called political prisoners, although the Governments disagree in both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and I am wondering, does he have, when he says he’s going to reach out to civil society, can you say whether he’s actually asked to meet any imprisoned political figure?

Associate Spokesperson: I wouldn’t give the itinerary, the precise itinerary, of his meetings just yet, but we’ll provide those details as they arise. But certainly, he will be meeting with civil society, and the sort of concerns he brings on all of his trips he will also bring on this one.

  But what, for example, of the HIV activist imprisoned by Uzbekistan which called his UNICEF-funded pamphlet blasphemous? Watch this site.

On Uzbek Human Rights, UN Won't Compare, Sting Sings, But Not For UNICEF

UNITED NATIONS, March 29 -- When the UN's Human Rights Committee reviews the record of a country like Uzbekistan, of what value is it? Uzbekistan persecutes political opponents and religious minorities: for example, it has locked up a UNICEF-funded AIDS activist by calling his pamphlets blasphemous.

Last week Inner City Press asked Committee members if Uzbekistan's record was getting better or worse. "That's not the way we address it," replied Krister Thelin, a Swedish member of the Committee. "I will not engage at this time in any grading exercise. I hope you can respect that." Video here, from Minute 32:43.

  Is Uzbekistan's record better or worse than New Zealand, which was also being reported on? We don't compare, was the answer, along with a coy pointing to the fact that Uzbekistan has been asked to report again in three years, while New Zealand has been given five years, the "top grade."

  Perhaps it's this garbled or non-speak which for example allowed former Police bassist Sting to recently take money to play a concert for the daughter of Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov.

Krister Thelin at UN, comparison of Uzbekistan and NZ not shown

 When confronted, Sting said he thought the concert was "sponsored by UNICEF."

But Inner City Press asked UNICEF spokesman Chris de Bono, twice, and both times was told the UNICEF had nothing to do with Ms. Karimova's concert featuring Sting.

With so little said at the press conference, one had to go back to the UN's own write up of the Committee's proceedings on Uzbekistan. Therein, at page 9, one finds the blissfully unaware comments of one "Hellen Keller" of Switzerland who "said she was particularly impressed by the blue booklet the delegation had provided to the Committee." You might ask, how did she know it was blue? Or, what would have has thought of the requirment by neighboring Turkmenistan that all children read the leader's book, Ruhnama?