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UN Quietly Reports Over 100 Killed in Congo by LRA
After "Well-Judged" Attack on Group
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
December 29 -- As the UN Security
Council met until 3 am on Saturday night about the Gaza air strikes
which,
according to the UN have killed 62 women and children, in Orientale
Province of
the Democratic Republic of the Congo well over 100 people were hacked
to death
with machetes. This attack was barely mentioned Monday at the UN. Ban
Ki-moon
held a press conference and spoke only about Gaza, took no questions on
Gaza or
any other topic.
John
Holmes the head of the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs was asked by
Inner City Press about his Office's
methodology in counting the dead in Gaza, which many saw as implying
that only
women and children were civilians, and why this methodology is used
in Gaza but
not in Africa. Holmes said it is not a methodology and was only meant
to help
the Press.
Supposedly
OCHA has issued a report that nearly 200 civilians were
killed in Orientale Province by the Lord's Resistance Army. The report
was not
made available in the UN's Spokesperson's Office -- where, for example,
a three
paragraph UNAMID press release about a dead peacekeeper was displayed
-- and
does not seem to use the Gaza methodology, of implying that men are or
may be
combatants and not civilians.
The
LRA,
meanwhile, claims that Uganda's Army the UPDF is behind the killings,
to blame
them on the LRA. Either way, over 100
are dead, in fall-out from the three-nation assault on the LRA's camp
in the
Congo. UK Ambassador John Sawers back on December 17 called this
assault, known as
Operation Lightning Thunder,
"well-judged." Video here,
from Minute 4.
Joseph Kony, center, and LRA-ers many since
dead, perhaps counted as civilians
Now,
humanitarians are saying that far too little forethought was given to
what
would happen if Joseph Kony was not killed in the assault, what the LRA
would
do. As the issue of extrajudicial killing is being raised about
Israel's
bombing of the houses of Hamas leaders in Gaza, the UN through envoy
Joaquim
Chissano, and its Security Council through a Presidential Statement,
have
embraced a military strategy that itself smacked of extrajudicial
killing of
the indicted war criminal Joseph Kony.
There
always seems to be a different standard for Africa, even or
especially at the UN, including as related to counting the dead and
whether
they are civilians.
Update: the UN has scheduled a press
conference Tuesday by Robert Serry about Gaza, but not even a noon
briefing to field questions including about over 100 civilians killed
in the Congo.
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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