Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
The UN is to investigate itself again after it was
revealed
by the London Telegraph today that more than twenty
different cases of child sex slavery involving UN staff have been
reported in southern Sudan.
The Telegraph reports that it has learned of dozens
of victims’ accounts claiming that some peacekeeping and
civilian staff based in the town are regularly picking up young
children in their UN vehicles and forcing them to have sex. The
Telegraph states that it is thought that hundreds of children
may have been abused.
The UN has up to 10,000 military personnel in the
region, of all nationalities and the allegations involve peacekeepers,
military police and civilian staff.
The Telegraph also states that the Sudanese government,
which is deeply opposed to the deployment of UN troops to Darfur,
has evidence of child sex slavery, including video footage of
Bangladeshi UN workers allegedly having sex with three young girls.
Stating that such events are ultimately the work
of "a few bad apples", a UN spokesperson promised that
they will be thoroughly investigated.
Over the past few years, however, there seems to
have been a hell of a lot of rotting fruit in the UN barrel.
Last November a BBC
Investigation found that children as young as 11
have been subjected to rape and prostitution by United Nations
peacekeepers in Haiti and Liberia. A previous BBC investigation
in Liberia discovered systematic abuse, involving food being given
out to teenage refugees in return for sex. In both instances the
UN promised to investigate.
In 2003 the AP reported that UN officials were identified
as using a ship charted for 'peacekeepers' to
traffick young girls from Thailand to East Timor
as prostitutes.
In the same year it was also revealed that UN staff
were guilty
of raping women on a systematic scale in Sierra Leone.
Previous to this, in early 2002 a massive pedophilia
scandal within the UN was uncovered involving sexual abuse against
West African refugee children in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
UPI
reported that Senior U.N. officials knew of the widespread
pedophilia and not only did they not take action against the perpetrators,
they covered up the atrocities.
It was later
reported that after The UN's' investigating arm had
cleared several U.N. workers of charges of sexual abuse against
West African refugee children, it substantiated 10 new cases against
aid workers.
Damning cases involving workers making
home porn movies and so called weapons inspectors
having bizarre sadomasochistic, pansexual and leather fetishes
also emerged at this time.
In 2004 The New
York Post reported that the UN was trying to block
the publication of a book by three United Nations fieldworkers
that detailed sex, drugs and corruption inside multiple U.N. missions.
"Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story
from Hell on Earth" chronicles the experiences of a doctor,
a human-rights official and a secretary in U.N. operations in
Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia and Bosnia. It also
alleged that the UN knowingly hired freed criminals to serve as
peacemakers.
We have also previously reported on the intimate
involvement of Dyncorp, the contractors of the international police
force, in such sex scandals. One Dyncorp employee, Kathryn
Bolkovac, was sacked for detailing UN workers’
involvement in the sex trade in Bosnia. Bolkovac was sacked after
disclosing that UN peacekeepers went to nightclubs where girls
as young as 15 were forced to dance naked and have sex with customers,
and that UN personnel and international aid workers were linked
to prostitution rings in the Balkans.
Dyncorp was ordered to pay Kathryn Bolkovac £110,000
by an employment tribunal, yet both the British and the US governments
as well as the UN continue
to contract Dyncorp.
It was later revealed by the Chicago
Tribune that Halliburton subsidiary KBR and Dyncorp
lobbyists are working in tandem with the Pentagon to stall legislation
that would specifically ban trafficking in humans for forced labor
and prostitution by U.S. contractors.
On March 11th 2005, Representative Cynthia McKinney
grilled Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers on the Dyncorp scandal.
"Mr. Secretary, I watched President Bush deliver a moving
speech at the United Nations in September 2003, in which he mentioned
the crisis of the sex trade. The President called for the punishment
of those involved in this horrible business. But at the very moment
of that speech, Dyncorp was exposed for having been involved in
the buying and selling of young women and children. While all
of this was going on, Dyncorp kept the Pentagon contract to administer
the smallpox and anthrax vaccines, and is now working on a plague
vaccine through the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program. Mr. Secretary,
is it [the] policy of the U.S. Government to reward companies
that traffic in women and little girls?"
The response and McKinney's comeback was as follows.
Rumsfeld: "Thank you, Representative. First, the answer
to your first question is, is, no, absolutely not, the policy
of the United States Government is clear, unambiguous, and opposed
to the activities that you described. The second question."
McKinney: "Well how do you explain the fact
that Dyncorp and its successor companies have received and continue
to receive government contracts?"
Rumsfeld: "I would have to go and find the facts, but there
are laws and rules and regulations with respect to government
contracts, and there are times that corporations do things they
should not do, in which case they tend to be suspended for some
period; there are times then that the - under the laws and the
rules and regulations for the - passed by the Congress and implemented
by the Executive branch - that corporations can get off of - out
of the penalty box if you will, and be permitted to engage in
contracts with the government. They're generally not barred in
perpetuity."
McKinney: "This contract - this company - was never in the
penalty box."
Rumsfeld: "I'm advised by DR. Chu that it was not the corporation
that was engaged in the activities you characterized but I'm told
it was an employee of the corporation, and it was some years ago
in the Balkans that that took place."
Watch the video here.
Rumsfeld's effort to shift the blame away from the hierarchy
at Dyncorp and onto the Dyncorp employees was a blatant attempt
to hide the fact that human trafficking and sex slavery is a practice
condoned by companies like Dyncorp and Halliburton subsidiaries
like KBR.
Why should the UN be continually allowed to investigate itself
and, those that it contracts, on these issues? The UN has an abysmal
track record on this issue and a long history of covering up such
cases. It is time for a thorough independent inquiry of the UN
and its agencies and affiliates to be carried out.
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