Amid
Iraq Carnage,
UN's Website
of Casualties
Remains
Unavailable As
In
Sri Lanka
& Darfur
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
February 9 –
In Iraq there
is a dispute
about how many
people were
killed in the
Katyusha
rocket attack
on Camp
Liberty.
The
residents say
six were
killed, and
have provided
Inner City
Press
with names:
Mehdi Abed,
Mostafa
Khosravi,
Akbar Azizi,
Yaha Nazari,
Hadi Shafiee
and Ms. Pouran
Najafi.
Iraqi
authorities
counter that
only one
person was
killed, and
that they
cannot stop
and are not
responsible to
stop the
rocket
attacks.
As
to how many
were killed,
in this and
the many other
attacks and
suicide
bombings
throughout
Iraq, one
would expect
the UN to have
something to
say. They have
a mission in
Iraq, UNAMI,
and they have
a
website.
But
as pointed out
this morning
to Inner City
Press by an intrepid
reporter,
the UN's
“Attacks and
Casualties in
Iraq”
website
has for months
been blank
except for one
line: “This
website
is temporarily
unavailable.”
That
the UN is
technologically
incompetent
and ham-handed
is clear. In
New
York during
Hurricane
Sandy, the UN
could not even
send an e-mail
to
its member
states.
Yesterday
February
8, the UN
cut off its
UNTV webcast
just as Inner
City Press
pursued a
question about
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon's lack
of
fairness and
transparency
in favoring
the UN
Correspondents
Association,
which has
tried
to get the
investigative
Press thown
out of the UN,
and now
mocks
an alleged
victim of
sexual
harassment through
an anonymous
social media
account.
The
UN's
non-reporting
of casualties
in Iraq,
however, is
part of a
larger
pattern. In
Darfur, its
UNAMID mission
costing over
$1 billion a
year
stopped many
forms of
reporting. UN
partisans
blame this on
the
African Union,
the UN's
partner in
UNAMID.
But
in Sri Lanka
in 2009, as
exposed by
Inner City
Press, the UN actively
concealed the
death figures,
nearly
entirely of
Tamils,
compiled by
its own Office
for the
Coordination
of
Humanitarian
Affairs.
When
Inner City
Press, holding
up a leaked
copy of the
OCHA report,
asked
why it had
been buried,
Ban Ki-moon's
spokesperson
replied that
the
UN doesn't
count
killings, it
tries to stop
them.
The
UN is not
going a good
job at either.
It's time for
the UN to end
the
“temporary
unavailability”
of its
“Attacks and
Casualties in
Iraq” website.
Where is envoy
Martin Kobler
on this? Watch
this
site.
, 
