By David Hinz - Publisher
04/16/07

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There is ample evidence that the concept of Human Rights is a term entirely foreign to most members of the United Nations. Human Rights is instead, a club with which these dictatorships club the free nations of the world, particularly the United States. We then there is this from FrontPage Magazine.com: Iran has put itself forward as a candidate for a seat on the new United Nations Human Rights Council in its inaugural election of forty-seven members scheduled for May 9th. Insiders believe that Iran will be voted in by the General Assembly, because it is grouped with the Asian bloc of nations that are allotted thirteen seats on the forty-seven seat Council. Although members will be voted on individually, each region has a fixed number of guaranteed seats in order to ensure "equitable geographic distribution." So far, only nine countries in the Asian bloc, including Iran, China, and Pakistan, have decided to declare their interest for any of the reserved thirteen “Asian” seats.

That is correct. The new Council on Human Rights will likely include Iran, China and Pakistan. Do we really need to know anything else about that body? The UN, once merely ineffective, has by this time become corrupt as well! In the last several years the UN has distinguished itself for scandal and corruption.

AND, as though that wasn't enough evidence to make my point, now Cuba has been added to the new Council . That's right! Cuba will now sit in judgment of the US and other world powers on the issues of human rights! The inmates are indeed running the asylum! A few of the more recent United Nations efforts on behalf of Human Rights follow.

Rwanda

In 1994 the Hutu regime in Rwanda began an active genocide against the Tutsi tribe. The United Nations responded, but not in a decisive manner that might have prevented the genocide from occurring. Critics, even those within the UN itself charged that the UN was slow to react, and failed to anticipate the genocide. What began as “mass killings” degenerated into genocide. As so often has happened, UN peacekeepers avoid areas of conflict. When confronted with fighting, more often than not, the UN withdraws until the fighting is over. UN peacekeepers are anything but!

There were also “organizational problems” in the Secretariat in New York, he said. He also drew attention to certain States, “including my own country” [Sweden], who turned their backs on Rwanda altogether. It would “always be difficult to explain” why the United Nations decided to reduce its peacekeeping troop presence in Rwanda once the genocide had started, and increase it again only once it was over, Mr. Carlsson told journalists. The responsibility spread out to include the Secretary-General, the Security Council, UNAMIR and Member States, he said, adding that an “action plan” intended to prevent genocide in the future would have to include a clear statement that “without adequate resources there will be no peacekeeping”.

Failure to act is one thing. Being criminally part of the problem is quite another. It has been charged that before he was Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali actually instigated the genocide by providing arms to the Hutu regime.

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.

So, while Boutros-Ghali helped supply arms to the Hutus, the UN made sure that the Tutsis were unarmed.

“Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of Canada’s UN ‘peace-keeping’ mission to Rwanda in 1994, revealed that he had sent a fax to Annan’s office warning that Rwandan security officials had been ordered to ‘register’ the (predominantly Christian) Tutsis as an obvious prelude to mass liquidation. Annan’s office ordered Dallaire to ‘assist in the recovery of all weapons distributed to or illegally acquired by civilians,’ which, in effect, meant disarming the intended victims!” The result of the disarmament is another dismal chapter in history. The Rwandan government waged a massive genocidal campaign against the Tutsis while the UN looked on and washed its hands of responsibility in the matter.

Darfur In 2003 the Janjaweed, an armed Islamic group in Sudan began the systematic “ethnic cleansing,” or genocide of the Christian population of the Darfur Region in Sudan. In addition, The Hinzsight Report has documented the fact that the Arab militias have been enslaving the Christian minority in Darfur. The Sudanese government denies any support for the Janaweed, however evidence supports the claim that the government is arming and supporting the action.

The Arab nomads never came with cars and helicopters. This is not Arab nomads. This is the government. We had a self-defense unit, but when we saw the cars we said ‘This is the government’ and we ran. We didn’t fight. The government doesn’t like black people.

Estimates are now that over a million persons have been displaced from their homes, while an estimated 300,000 have died, over half from starvation. What has the United Nations done to stop the bloodshed? UN peacekeepers, unable to stop the slaughter have been forced to stand by and watch government forces massacre civilians using machetes and bayonets. This is the United Nations at its finest! After years of ineffectual response by the UN, with thousands of additional deaths and displacements, the United States has finally been called upon to end the tragedy. In fact, the left in this country has demanded that the US place troops in harm's way, in an action guaranteed to fail, and that is of absolutely no vital interest to our country. This, it would appear, is the only purpose the left can find for the US military. With US diplomatic involvement, it would appear that a cease-fire and peace agreement has finally been reached in the region. While the region is far from peaceful, the genocide appears to have finally ended.

After a frenetic all-night negotiating session, the Sudanese government and the largest of the Darfur rebel groups signed a hard-fought peace agreement on Friday intended to end three years of misery and bloodshed in Dafur. But two much smaller rebel groups angrily demurred, leaving open the possibility that they would threaten the accord. “We are reaffirming that the fighting ends now in Darfur,” said Minni Arcua Minnawi, the leader of the rebel group that signed the agreement. Mr. Minnawi is believed to control about 75 percent of the rebel forces in Darfur, a region in western Sudan. “We shall go ahead with peace and we shall be serious,” he added.

Congo

In 2004 there was a civil war and the mass murders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And again, UN peacekeepers are under armed, under manned, and over restricted by rules of engagement. Some three million Congolese have been killed so far, but all UN peacekeepers have done is stand by and watch them being murdered. That would be bad enough. But there was more to taint the UN image.

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. 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.” ...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.

Not mere ineffectual, the UN peacekeepers have become the oppressors, engaging in systematic rape, and even murder. Rather than addressing the problem in any type of responsible matter, the UN instead issues condoms!

Somalia

Somalia, which was effectively been without a government since the 1980s, has been torn by violence and civil war, as competing Warlords battle for power. When UN relief efforts and workers were threatened in 1992, the US put troops into the area, under the UN, to restore order and protect the workers. This effort was named Operation Restore Hope. The result of this mission of peace was the now infamous “Blackhawk Down” incident in which the bodies of 18 servicemen were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

The troops originally sent by President GHWB, were immediately pulled out by newly elected President Bill Clinton. Osama bin Laden, who was in Somalia at the time working with the warlord Aidid, saw the US flee when confronted with American deaths, and took from that the fact that America was a paper tiger. He decided that the US did not have the stomach to lose American casualties, and he was emboldened. But, more than just a peacekeeping failure, Somalia has degenerated into a UN sanctioned scandal of epic proportions. The peacekeepers themselves have become the oppressors.

Back in 1997, there were reports Belgian UN 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.

Iran

From today's headlines we can see that the UN is still unable to react effectively to a world threat. Iran, thumbing its nose at the world, the US and the United Nations, has promised to continue its nuclear program, despite UN opposition. And the UN is powerless to prevent it! From an article last year in the Charlotte Observer:

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said that most of the countries that took part in the talks -- the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany on Tuesday, the Group of Eight industrialized countries on Wednesday -- favored imposing sanctions on Iran if it doesn't stop its nuclear program.

“Everybody talked about the need to consider actions. The majority said sanctions,” Burns said.

But China and Russia, who as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council can veto any proposal, still remain opposed.

As if to underscore its position, Russia confirmed that it would sell 29 mobile air defense missiles to Iran -- a step Burns criticized.

Since this article was first penned nearly a year ago, the situation vis-à-vis Iran has only gotten worse. The International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is that arm of the United Nations detailed to monitor and prevent the proliferation of Atom Weapons. IAEA attempts to work with the regime in Tehran, to monitor and verify that the Iranian program is designed only for peaceful domestic energy use, has consistently been thwarted, stonewalled and ignored.

UN threats of sanctions, now numbering more than a dozen, against Iran have had little or no effect. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president who has consistently denied the holocaust, called for the destruction of Israel and of the United States, has threatened to cut off the supply of oil if the world body interferes. The UN has issued harshly worded, but toothless resolutions.

Recently the Tehran regime kidnapped and held fifteen British sailors and marines, holding them for more than two weeks. The UN stood by uselessly. In defiance of world opinion, he paraded the prisoners before the cameras and elicited statements from them admitting their own, and their nation’s misdeeds against Iran. The UN Council on Human Rights was silent. The UN Security Council was silent.

The UN General Assembly was silent. Iran has become a crisis that begs for world attention. A crisis that will become the problem of the United States, as the UN debates.

There are so many other failures that this article could become a book.All over the world, UN efforts have consistently failed!

People who support the United Nations and condemn the actions of the United States sometimes ask, "Do you want the US to be the policeman of the world?"

My answer would be, NO! I don't want the US to have to be the policeman of the world, by itself. But sometimes it just has to be that way! If you look out your window, and see a group of thugs raping women, how many calls to 911 have to go unanswered, with the police never showing up, before you get together with your neighbors to take action on your own? The UN has not been answering the calls!

It has become all too apparent that the UN cannot function. The United States needs to lead a pullout of the United Nations by all the truly democratically elected nations of the world. The US needs to cut off all funding to the UN and expel the UN from New York. If the body wishes to continue operating, let them set up shop in Uruguay or Pango Pango. The US should withdraw US forces from any and all UN "peacekeeping" missions and/or relief efforts.

Of course, the US would be condemned for any such action. The UN might even call for sanctions! But, since the United States is the only nation that ever upholds UN sanctions, it would clearly be a toothless weapon.

It is a fact, that the United States military does most of the heavy lifting in any UN action, and always has. The fact that the US has not had UN backing in Iraq, and quite probably will not, in Iran, is of little consequence. The nations that the US can count on will be there with or without the UN!

The US then should set up another body, sort of a “coalition of the willing,” to borrow a term from this President, which is limited to demonstrably democratically elected governments. A good beginning might include, The US, Canada, Great Britain, France (with reservations), Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, India and Japan.

Unlike the United Nations, not all nations would be eligible for this coalition, but only those deemed worthy by the member nations. Other nations could apply for membership. In a few years, through United States leadership, Afghanistan and Iraq might well qualify.

The first order of business for this new Organization would be the war on terror; eliminating terrorist cells and states wherever they arise. This coalition of the democratic nations of the world, could and would act as “policeman of the world,” taking decisive action to stop mass murders and atrocities across the globe. They can do no worse than the failed United Nations, and can, in my opinion, probably do much better!

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