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

In Juba, Chinese UN Trainer Down on Referendum, Criticizes UNMIS, Calling Li Baodong

By Matthew Russell Lee

SUDAN, October 9 -- A Chinese woman providing police training in Juba with the UN Mission in Sudan -- it had feel good story written all over it. But something was amis.

First, rather than staying in the UNMIS base, Xun Chen paid to live in the Beijing Juba Hotel. "The water and sanitation are better," she told Inner City Press.

  "The Mission is too disorganized. For example I am entitled to have a vehicle, but there are none. For forty of us police trainers, there are only three vehicles. So I often walk the half an hour to work, each way, then just crash and out go to sleep when I get back to the hotel."

  This is Xun Chen's second deployment to South Sudan, and third overall with the UN. Her other stint was in Timor Leste, which she calls “a better mission. UNMIS is badly run.”

  She is unable to contact the leadership. Thus she asked Inner City Press how to contact China's Ambassador to the UN, Li Baodong, who was traveling with the Security Council delegation in Sudan.

  The context of Xun Chen's work is to train South Sudanese police to get them ready to provide security during the referendum on secession, scheduled for January 9 but some think to be delayed. But she is not upbeat, about either the referendum or secession.

Contrary to claims other made to Inner City Press, Xun Chen said a large portion of the South Sudan police she was asked to train were illiterate. “We should have started with that,” she said. Instead they are providing train that she is not sure is getting through.

  The next day at the ballyhooed training base at Rejaf, many claims are made about the training, including by US Ambassador Susan Rice. But when the press asked a European trainer on background if any human rights training is given, he scoffed. Many of them can't read, he said. Human rights laws are written. So rights are not really part of the curiculum.

  Back at the Beijing Juba Hotel, Xun Chen became agitated to track down Li Baodong.

The Beijing Juba, surrounded by UN cars, UNMIS reform not shown, (c) MRLee

  Where is he staying, she kept asking UNMIS spokespeople. The UN list Inner City Press had been given included a hotel called New York, New York. But the VIPs were at the Grand. Xun Chen disappeared into the night in a colleague's private car, not before telling Inner City Press not to venture out into the darkness.

  But it was irresistible, and hunger at the end of a long day can motivate. Down a long pitch black road, with signs sponsored by UK DFID and UNEP urging passersby not to litter, an Eritrean run restaurant called the Basilica beckoned, “past the red cell phone tower and the gas station,” the instructions were.

  Inside there was a big screen TV with European soccer, and a menu including chicken broast and chips. There was no Nile Beer but there was Tusker. Perhaps there was talk of Somalia. Was a new country being born?

  Near midnight at the Beijing Juba Hotel, Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong arrived with an entourage. He said he was staying here, and not with the other Ambassadors. The next day he told Inner City Press the hotel is an example of Chinese's cooperation with both South Sudan as well as Khartoum.

  Sadly it appears Xun Chen never found her Ambassador. UNMIS goes on unreformed. Watch this site.

Notes: The context, some might say, of Xun Chen's critique of the referendum and secession may lie in her very Chinese-ness. The People's Republic of China is historically against secession movements, facing its down in Tibet, Taiwan and sometimes Xinjiang. But Xun Chen's dissatisfaction seems more personal.

 Negative reviews of UNMIS extended to Khartoum, where locally-based reporters complained to Inner City Press that the Mission is not transparent, that UNMIS chief Haile Menkerios never speaks to the Press, and that they are not at all clear what UNMIS is doing. Maybe that's the way the UN wants it?

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