'UN itself violates freedom of expression'

By Jonathan Power

LONDON (JP): "One of the fundamental purposes of the United Nations is to defend freedom of expression. Today that right is being violated by the UN itself. The same institution that framed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is now accused of suppressing information about human rights abuses and has become a censor in its own right."

This is the opening paragraph of an extraordinarily revealing expose of the UN published earlier this week by Article 19, the London-based International Centre Against Censorship, and written by Richard Reoch, who for 20 years was the shrewdly brilliant director of information at Amnesty International. The United Nations, he writes, has become a "super censor" which operates in a "culture of secrecy, prejudice and complicity." He records in great detail how governmental manipulation of UN human rights committees has led to the suppression of a "substantial number" of allegations of abuses in the five veto-wielding countries, including Britain and the U.S.

And that disclosure on human rights abuses in the well-known cases of Argentina, Haiti and the Philippines were only made after changes in government from military dictatorship to civilian rule. Alarmingly, Reoch documents that UN operations in the field are often wanting in human rights monitoring. UN operations in El Salvador failed to report publicly on human rights violations.

In ex-Yugoslavia, essential information that would have helped relatives trace missing victims during the Serbian "ethnic cleansing" was withheld. Perhaps most serious of all, UN forces in Somalia, including the American contingent, violated the Geneva Conventions by refusing to disclose crucial information about the casualties they inflicted on local people. But that is not the all of it by any means. The UN actually has a working Commission on Human Rights, meant to actively watch and investigate abuses. It is mostly a horror story--of inactivity. As when, after discussing Saddam Hussein's gas attack on Kurdish towns and villages in 1988, when more than 5,000 men, women and children choked to death, it decided no action was required. The appalling consequences of this secret process don't need elaborating on. I have now experienced the deadly reach of the UN apparatchiks first hand. This week was supposed to see the publication of a book, Vision of Hope, that I've edited on the history and workings of the UN. Although commissioned by the UN, it was funded by corporate sponsors and, rather than being published in-house, was given to an independent commercial publisher who wanted "an outsider's look" at the UN.

It has ended as a sad story with all the contributors, including myself, taking our names off the book, having failed to stop the UN forcing on the publisher 70 serious cuts. It reveals a refusal on the part of senior UN officials to permit publication of historical facts, to allow commentary on reform of the UN's structures, and to report allegations of conflict and corruption inside the UN.

A number of friends have said, sort of comfortingly, "Well, what did you expect?"

What I expected was simply this--the application of Article 100 of the UN Charter (to which the governments of the world re- dedicated their allegiance at ceremonies in San Francisco on Monday). It reads thus: "In performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any authority external to the Organization."

They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the organization." So on what authority did Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and his undersecretary-general for public policy, Gillian Sorensen, decide to go ahead, despite our vehement protests, and delete any mention of the existence of the Dalai Lama? Significantly, neither the General Assembly nor any other UN body has ever passed a resolution mandating the Secretariat to avoid or prevent any reference to the disputed territory of Tibet or its exiled leader. One can only assume they felt leaned on by China and hadn't the guts to resist. Boutros Boutros-Ghali's predecessor, Javier Perez de Cuellar, I think, would have acted differently. He seized the end of the Cold War to throw open some of the windows of the UN. Every year the United Nations Development Program publishes its Human Development Report which points a finger at all manner of countries for short-falls, both in their economic and political development. UNICEF too had an admirable track record under the directorship of the late James Grant, often accusing individual governments in its well documented reports of a wide range of transgressions. So Boutros-Ghali has decided to close off this light. All I would ask him again is -- on whose authority?