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

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 8, 2014 -- When UN Peacekeeping closes down or even just re-names one of its missions, what remains of its history, including its website and domain?

  Well at least under Herve Ladsous as regards the old MONUC.org, now renamed MONUSCO, history is purged, sold off, covered up.

   And then, tellingly, the UN dissembles, today telling Inner City Press that MONUC.org is not really gone. But it is - click here and watch as www.MONUCO.org redirects to www.waypathinternet.com - and along with it, history of complicity in the Rwanda genocide.

  On April 7, 2014, the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, Ladsous openly refused to answer Inner City Press' question about when MONUSCO will belatedly go after the Hutu FDLR militia, saying "Mister, you know I never answer your questions and you know very well why." Video here.

Why, then? Ladsous was France's Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN in 1994 during the Rwanda genocide, and he argued for French policies including the escape of the genocidaires into Eastern Congo. See sample memo, here.

Ladsous would certainly like that 1994 memo to disappear - in fact, by refusing to answer Press questions he tries to disappear the issue. But consider this:

On the old MONUC missions website, MONUC.org, was this about former UN staffer Callixte Mbarushimana, at a page named http://www.monuc.org/news.aspx?newsID=17015

"Callixte Mbarushimana in Paris

"The serious and consistent allegations against Callixte Mbarushimana, the executive secretary of the FDLR, have been a source of considerable embarrassment for the UN for many years. After the evacuation of foreign staff, the 44-year-old computer technician appointed himself as Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Rwanda, from 10 April to 4 July 1994. He is accused by dozens of witnesses, including former colleagues, militiamen and local administrators, of used his position, and the resources, of the UNDP, to advance the policy of massacres, including the murder of Tutsis who worked for the UNDP. Dressed in military fatigues, armed with a gun and carrying grenades in his belt, witnesses say that he lent the vehicles and satellite telephones of the UNDP to militaryofficers, that he also used the UNDP vehicles to facilitate his own contribution to the killings."

On a previous April 7, Inner City Press had written about Mbarushimana, citing and linking to MONUC.org.

  But attempting it on April 7, 2014 it emerged that the UN has not only abandoned the website of its largest and longest running peacekeeping mission - it has allowed a for profit company PathwayInternet.com to take it over. So much for preserving memory. Under Ladsous, the goal seems to be to censor or disappear memory.

  And so on April 8 Inner City Press asked the UN's deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq what had happened to MONUC.org, and to the information about the Rwanda genocide that used to be on it. Haq's office returned with this, copied to lead spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, which leaves MONUC.org and that now missing information UNaddressed:

  So too out in the world: a "V-Day" website about sexual violence in the DRC, on which Ladsous is now slated to speak on April 9 along with Zainab Bangura and Navi Pillay after Ladsous refused questions about the Minova rapes for months, click here, now points to a non-existent (or covered-up, sold off) page, http://www.monuc.org/News.aspx?newsID=855&menuOpened=About%20MONUC

   It is noteworthy that despite the ease of verifying where www.MONUC.org points now, the above was sent - but Inner City Press' April 8 question about what Ladsous said about drones or UUAVs has not yet been answered. We'll have more on this.

  Also in Ladsous' UN Peacekeeping there is a process of not speaking in the first place. At the event on April 7, 2014 where Ladsous refused to answer, Inner City Press also asked why for example Ladsous' Western Sahara mission MINURSO has no social media presence. It is listed at the bottom of UN Peacekeeping's website as a "missions with no social media presence."

  The answer given -- not by Ladsous, who refuses Inner City Press questions -- is that for some missions, countries do no give permission for certain equipment or, apparently, Twitter accounts. But who could it be, banning MINURSO in Western Sahara from social media?

Ladsous tries to spoonfeed information to friendly scribes; in his favor first the UN Correspondents Association (requested by Agence France Presse) then the current spokesperson of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have made threats to discourage coverage. There's more on this - but this is yesterday's video, here; this is today's UN. Watch this site.