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Little Law &
Order at the UN, Guinea Crimes Taint Ban's Eulogy
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS,
April 1 -- Uganda's notorious rebel movement, the Lord's Resistance
Army, made a rare appearance on American network television on March
31. It was not on a news program or documentary, but rather as part
of the plot of an episode of NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims
Unit. A homeless man find a Uganda girl in a vacant lot, slashed
across the throat and barely alive. The show's detectives follow
leads to a church in Staten Island then back to Harlem, where a
former LRA child soldier lives with other refugees. He in turn leads
them to “the Devil of Gulu,” now working as a janitor and
described as nearly indicted by the International Criminal Court
before he left the region.
In the run-up
to the episode's airing, when the United Nations spokesperson twice
promoted the show and the UN's role in it -- CNN covered it as the
first use of the UN premises by a network TV program -- Inner City
Press had guessed that it would portray LRA leader Joseph
Kony,
indicted by the ICC and on the run in Congo. But if Law & Order
is indeed “ripped from the headlines,” this Devil of Gulu is
based on a lower ranking LRA captain.
After several
plot twists, the show says that the U.S. government will extradite
the Devil of Gulu to the ICC in the Hague. With the U.S. still not a
member of the ICC, it is not known if this would or could happen. At
a UN Security Council end of presidency reception this week at Libya
House, the topic arose, whether the U.S. could or would arrest and
extradite to the Hague Sudan's President Omar al Bashir if he came to
the U.S..
The UN itself
made only slight appearances in the episode. A New York City
prosecutor enters through the 46th Street gate and talks with a
former law school classmate, now with UNHCR, who arranges for her to
receive LRA photographs from the ICC in the Hague. The same character
appears in the 42nd Street driveway, explaining that the UN would not
consider a person who began as a child soldier to later be guilty of
war crimes, even if he or she continued serving after hitting age 18.
Finally, the detectives walk on a ramp in the visitors' lobby.
That's it.
Contrary
to
what UN officials breathlessly projected to Inner City Press during
the panel discussion at the UN about another TV show, Battlestar
Galactica, there was no quote at the end of the Law & Order
episode from the UN's expert on children and armed conflict, Radhika
Coomaraswamy. The UN building appeared three times, in passing; the
only UN system speaker was a representative of the Geneva-based
refugee agency, UNHCR. As the spokesperson for Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon routinely points out, the ICC is not a UN body. So was this
really Law & Order, the UN edition?
UN's Ban in Uganda, Law & Order and Conte eulogy
not shown
Footnote:
at a
higher-brow level of the culture, complete with white wine and mini
quiches 12 floors above the UN entrance across First Avenue, the
International Peace Institute on the same night as the Law &
Order episode offered a by-invitation only dualogue between outgoing
New York Times bureau chief for West Africa, Lydia Polgreen and
former Times reporter Warren Hogue, now IPI vice president. In the
nature of a question, Hogue said among other things that IPI is
studying the effect of drug trans-shipment on the stability of states
in West Africa.
Ms. Polgreen
replied about the assassination of leaders in Guinea-Bissau, and the
military takeover in Guinea Conakry. That followed the death by
natural causes of the country's longtime dictator Lansana
Conte, whose passing
triggered a laudatory statement by the UN's Ban Ki-moon. Shortly
thereafter, a series of confessions including by
Conte's son
on Guinean television made clear that the leader praised by Ban had
used his position and even diplomatic pouch and privileges to
traffic
drugs to Europe. There has been no retraction or clarification of
Ban's eulogy. Is this Law and Order?
Click here for Inner City
Press' March 27 UN debate
Click here for Inner City
Press March 12 UN (and AIG
bailout) debate
Click here for Inner City
Press' Feb 26 UN debate
Click
here
for Feb.
12 debate on Sri Lanka http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17772?in=11:33&out=32:56
Click here for Inner City Press' Jan.
16, 2009 debate about Gaza
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
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
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
UN
Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017
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weekends):
718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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