Corruption at the UN office in Burundi: Secretary General must demand an explanation from Carolyn Mcaskie
UN Burundi head Carolyn McAskie
Click here to email the UN directly
Carolyn McAskie, the head of the UN Office in Burundi, has been visiting New York this week to discuss her operation with the United Nations Security Council. They must demand an explanation from her over reports of corrupt links between UN personnel and the Hutu-extremist group Palipehutu-FNL.
Twenty-three days ago, a senior FNL figure was arrested in Burundi with illegally-procured UN uniforms in his possession. He subsequently stated that he had obtained them from an employee of the South African UN peacekeeping force.
No explanation, or apology, has yet been offered by Carolyn McAskie or her staff for this gross compromise of UN neutrality. Many Burundians are very angry about this, and the reputation of the United Nations is suffering as a result.
Click here to support the call for a war crimes trial for Aloys Nzabampema and independent investigation into the ONUB uniforms scandal
Take action - Fax your MP!
Take action - sign the Gatumba petition
Burundi, human rights, Current Affairs, Politics, Africa
posted by R | 12:30 AM
4 Comments:
I've only recently discovered your site via Global Voices. I like the combination of posts and action - very good. We've linked to you from our blog and wish you all the best. Can you recommend any other good blogs from Burundi woirth visiting?
Hi! Thanks - are you guys the Zim site we've linked to from this site? We're 100% with those pushing for democratic change there. Do always tell us if we can help in anyway. We have a long list of websites for contacting various parliamentarians around the world over the net so please feel free to nick that if ever you need it!
Actually Rwasa and Mugabe have something interesting in common - both have been hailed and feted by Tanzania's President Mpaka. There appears to be a similar kind of love-is-blind "liberation fighters can do no evil" thing going on...
Anyhow, on the subject of other Burundi-related blogs/sites - there's obviously new stuff appearing all the time but to date most of the really top stuff I know of is produced by local independent journalists and unfortunately (at least from our point of view) mostly in French not English. Part of our purpose here is to translate at least a small fraction of these news stories for the English-speaking audience.
If anyone out there has a Burundi blog you think we should link to, let us know! We're keen to do everything we can to support the voices of Burundians online.
We look regularly at www.umuco.com, www.abarundi.org and www.ligue-iteka.bi (the latter is a local human rights organisation), but there are a good few others out there I'm aware of. These are all news rather than blogs, though. Word on the wire is that there's a major new multimedia project coming very soon run out of the Burundian diaspora in Belgium. Will post when it's been launched.
The only other dedicated Burundi-related blog I'm aware of is "Memoir Vigilante"/"Burundi Genocide", run by another member of our informal "Get Rwasa!" network. It's still new and getting going but it looks like it's going to be an interesting source of comment analysis from the "Action Contre Genocide" perspective.
Hi again. No that's not us, that's Zimpundit - but if you want to link to us too that would be great! We're a 'civic action support group' and our contributors are pro-democracy activists and we're based in Zimbabwe (link to blog: www.sokwanele.com/thisiszimbabwe).
We actually found you via a post ZimPundit published at Global Voices. Thanks for your support. We were saying yesterday when we were looking at your site that we get so bogged down by what's happening day to day in Zimbabwe that its easy to lose touch with horrors and injustice happening in other parts of Africa. I have to be honest that I know every little about Burundi, but I plan to learn more.
In fact, a couple of weeks ago we started an african blog roll on our site (your site is one it) - hence the question about other Burundi bloogers. I'll have a look at the links you suggest for other burundi sources. I'm also really hoping that seeing what other african's are doing will inspire more zimbabweans to take up blogging too.
Know what you mean about the "liberation fighters can do no evil" thing - terribly difficult to deal with that. But I see (from your blog) that Mbeki at least has criticised Rwasa, whereas South Africa continues to support and turn a blind eye to what mugabe does to us.
We are very interested in your long list of websites for contacting various parliamentarians. We plan to get an action mailing list started in the new year and to start making taking action a key part of what we do. That would be a fantastically useful resource and much appreciated if you've done the leg work already. Where do I find that on your site? Or could you email it to us (our contact email details on our blog).
We'll let you know when we get our list going - maybe we can exchange ideas.
You might try www.jaxburundi.blogspot.com for another blogger's educated perspective.
Post a Comment
<< Home