UN slow to respond to child sex abuse by Congo staff
By Caroline Overington
New York correspondent
New York
February 18, 2005
Late last year, police in the Democratic Republic of Congo decided to find out if it was true that United Nations peacekeepers and aid workers were raping girls as young as 12.
They set up a sting: a child was sent to the home of senior UN worker Didier Bourguet, who was thought to be among the worst offenders.
Bourguet allegedly tried to have sex with the girl, prompting police to raid the house. They found his bedroom set up like a film studio for making pornographic films. There were mirrors on three bedroom walls, and on the fourth wall, a camera that Bourguet could operate with a remote control.
On his computer, they allegedly found dozens of videos and photos of him having sex with children. In one photo, tears are rolling down the face of a victim.
Bourguet is on trial in France, but his arrest hardly ends the matter. The UN has since admitted that some of its peacekeepers regularly raped, abused and prostituted children in their care.
Besides Bourguet, the UN has collected information about two peacekeepers in Congo who gave young girls jars of mayonnaise and jam in exchange for sex.
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In another case, a 14-year-old girl has told UN investigators that she had sex with a UN peacekeeper in exchange for two eggs; her family was starving.
Another girl, also 14, took food from an apparently friendly peacekeeper on four occasions. On the fifth, he asked for sex. She agreed, in exchange for $US2 ($A2.50), bread and chocolate.
The UN has known about these abuses for some time but is only now scrambling to respond to the charges.
The impetus was a documentary, shown on the American ABC network this week in which girls in Congo, formerly known as Zaire, came forward to detail the abuse. One woman said her 15-year-old daughter, who is deaf and mute, was made pregnant by a UN official. She went to the gates of a UN camp to plead for food or other help for the girl, who has since given birth to a son, but she was turned away.
A girl, 13, said she was a prostitute for UN soldiers, who paid her $US1.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative in Congo, William Lucy Swing, said when the abuse reports surfaced: "We are shocked, we are outraged, we are sickened by it."
Mr Annan has acknowledged that "acts of gross misconduct have taken place". Yet he seems immune to the outrage. In response on Wednesday to questions in New York about the scandal, he urged UN troops "to be careful" not to "fraternise" with these "vulnerable people".
Mr Annan previously headed the UN's peacekeeping force. Asked whether he could have done more to prevent the abuse in Congo, he said: "You never know when you send that many people out. There may be one or two bad apples."
Congolese Defence Minister Jean Pierre Ondekane has said all the UN would be remembered for in his country was "running after little girls".
U.N. 'peacekeepers' rape women, children
Widespread sex scandal threatens to become 'United Nations' Abu Ghraib'
Posted: December 24, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
With the United Nations already under fire for the Oil-for-Food mega-scandal and other corruption, sensational allegations of rampant sexual exploitation and rape of young girls and women by the U.N.'s so-called "peacekeepers" and civilian staffers in the Congo is dragging the global body's reputation to an all-time low.
In a new report referring to the widespread sex scandal as "the U.N.'s Abu Ghraib," the London Times provides some specific examples, including:
* A French U.N. logistics expert in the Congo shot pornographic videos in his home, in which he had converted his bedroom into a photo studio for videotaping his sexual abuse of young girls. When police raided his home, the man was allegedly about to rape a 12-year-old girl sent to him in a law enforcement sting operation. As the Times reported, a senior Congolese police officer confirmed the bed was surrounded by large mirrors on three sides, with a remote control camera on the fourth side.
* U.N. officials are worried that the scandal, which already has netted 150 allegations of sex crimes by U.N. staffers, will explode if the pornographic videos and photos, now on sale in Congo, becoming public
"It would be a pretty big problem for the U.N. if these pictures come out," one senior official told the Times.
* Two Russian pilots paid young girls with jars of mayonnaise and jam to have sex with them, the report adds.
* U.N. "peacekeepers" from Morocco based in Kisangani – a secluded town on the Congo River – are notorious for impregnating local women and girls. In March, an international group probing the scandal found 82 women and girls had been made pregnant by Moroccan U.N. staffers and 59 others by Uruguayan staffers. One U.N. soldier accused of rape was apparently hidden in the barracks for a year.
Congo's Minister of Defense Maj.-Gen. Jean Pierre Ondekane told a top U.N. official that all U.N. "peacekeepers" in Kisangani would be remember for would be "for running after little girls," the Times reported.
* And at least two U.N. officials – a Ukrainian and a Canadian – have been forced to leave the African nation after getting local women pregnant.
Most of the sexual abuse and exploitation, says the report, involves trading sex for money, food or jobs. However, some victims say they were raped, but later given food or money to make the incident appear to have been consensual – "rape disguised as prostitution."
U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno told the London paper: "The fact that these things happened is a blot on us. It's awful. What is important is to get to the bottom of it and fight it and make sure that people who do that pay for what they have done."
Despite the fact that the U.N.'s sexual code of conduct is prominently displayed on U.N. facilities Congo – forbidding sex with prostitutes or women under 18 – the U.N. continues to hand out free condoms to "peacekeepers" to protect them from AIDS.
The U.N. has promised to investigate and prosecute the widespread allegations. But, as WND reported last month, the global organization is not known for its forthrightness and candor in such internal investigations. The agency has been criticized for ignoring evidence or wrongdoing in the past – including accusations of rape and murder by "peacekeepers."
In fact, previous revelations of peacekeeping abuses have only been revealed by news organizations. Such was the case in Cambodia in the early 1990s and later in Somalia, Bosnia and Ethiopia.
"I am afraid there is clear evidence that acts of gross misconduct have taken place," Secretary-General Kofi Annan admitted. "This is a shameful thing for the United Nations to have to say, and I am absolutely outraged by it."
Annan said the allegations concerned a small number of U.N. personnel and promised to hold those involved accountable.
"I have long made it clear that my attitude to sexual exploitation and abuse is one of zero tolerance, without exception, and I am determined to implement this policy in the most transparent manner," Annan said.
But Jordan’s Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, a special adviser to Annan and who led one investigative team, said in a confidential report obtained by The Times: "The situation appears to be one of 'zero-compliance with zero-tolerance' throughout the mission."
The new charges of rape and pedophilia by U.N. troops and workers in Congo are not the first scandal involving U.N. workers and troops in Africa.
Former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's tenure was marked by scandalous charges that he played a leading role in supplying weapons to the Hutu regime that carried out a campaign of genocide against the Tutsi tribe in 1994.
As minister of foreign affairs in Egypt, Boutros-Ghali facilitated an arms deal in 1990, which was to result in $26 million of mortar bombs, rocket launchers, grenades and ammunition being flown from Cairo to Rwanda. The arms were used by Hutus in attacks which led to up to a million deaths. The role of Boutros-Ghali, who was in charge at the U.N. when it turned its back on the killings in 1994, was revealed in a book by Linda Melvern. In "A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide," Boutros-Ghali admits his role in approving an initial $5.8 million arms deal in 1990, which led to Egypt supplying arms to Rwanda until 1992. He says he approved it because it was his job as foreign minister to sell weapons for Egypt.
Back in 1997, there were reports Belgian U.N. troops roasted a Somali boy. A military court reportedly sentenced two paratroopers to a month in jail and a fine of 200 pounds for the offense.
Another Belgian soldier reportedly forced a young Somali to eat pork, drink salt water and then eat his own vomit. Another sergeant was accused of murdering a Somali whom he was photographed urinating upon. Another child, accused of stealing food from the paratroopers' base, died after being locked in a storage container for 48 hours. Fifteen other members of the same regiment were investigated in 1995 for "acts of sadism and torture" against Somali civilians.
The pattern of abuse was not confined to Belgian troops. Belgium was actually the third country in the peacekeeping group to charge troops with serious crimes against Somali citizens -- including rape, torture and murder. In 1995, a group of Canadian paratroopers were investigated for torturing a Somali to death and killing three others.
Gruesome photos were published in a Milan magazine of Italian soldiers torturing a Somali youth and abusing and raping a Somali girl. Paratroopers claim they were specifically trained in methods of torture to aid interrogation. According to one witness, Italian soldiers tied a young Somali girl to the front of an armored personnel carrier and raped her while officers looked on.
Congo: Girls Allege Rape
Commentary by Steve Harrigan for FOX Fan Central
Feb. 22, 2005
Democratic Republic of Congo
Our team here in the Congo found another group of girls who say they have been raped by U.N. peacekeepers. We've been interviewing four or five a day. It is easy to get hardened or callous after three or four days of it. The first girl, age 11, sat down and told her story. It was mesmerizing. She said she was going down to the lake to wash clothes when she was taken. She sat in the chair and spoke Swahili in a soft voice. After 10 or 12 such girls it was hard to take in.
One afternoon outside of the humanitarian organization Save the Children, part of our team pulled up in a minivan with three more girls — three more girls who claim to have been raped. I looked them over to see if there would be anything different about their stories.
One girl got out of the van. She was 9 years old, but she was a big 9-year-old. To me, she looked like the other girls. I didn't see how it would add or change the story, but Z said we should interview her since we were there. So we did. I asked her to do the interview. I went back to the car. I didn't even stand around to listen. I had heard enough. I would read the transcript after it was translated.
Save the Children was not much help. The guard outside the gate told us in French, "Just the whites, the blacks stay outside." Half of our team is black. The guard himself was black. When we finally got in, the administrator said they mostly dealt with reuniting families. They didn't deal with little girls allegedly raped by U.N. peacekeepers. So we left.
We found three more girls yesterday, all who said they were raped by U.N. peacekeepers here in Congo. This time it was something different. One of them was tiny. She was just above my knee when she stood up. I thought she must be a younger sister of one of the victims. In fact she was one of the victims, 7 years old. When we put her in the chair to interview her, her feet did not touch the ground. Her internal organs had been damaged. She had a tiny red smock on and her head was shaved. She had not been to the doctor to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, but the local children's organization we found her through thought she may have gonorrhea.
The shot I wanted to get was myself walking with her, to show how small she was. We went back to the scene of the alleged crime, the high grass about 20 yards away from the barbed wire wall of one of the U.N. peacekeeper bases here in Goma. The little 7-year-old girl slowly put both arms above her head, hands together, elbows out, as if trying to shelter herself from an attack that had happened weeks ago. I walked with her off the path and a few steps into the grass. She stopped. I wanted to see the exact spot where she said she was raped. The translator was on the phone. I asked her if this was the spot. She said something and the little girl's arms went up over her head again. She took a couple more steps, then pointed at the long green grass in front of us, then she turned around, arms still over her head, and began to walk back toward the path.
There's lots more where this came from.
I hear the U.N. has adopted a "Zero Tolerance-no fraternization" policy which is being ignored with total impugnity.
Boy, that Kofi Annan sure carries a big stick, huh?
The man personnifies effective leadership.
I say we try to sign him to a lifetime deal!
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Originally Posted by vidcc
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