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July 25, 2005
U.N. Watch: The U.N. vs. Zimbabwe
The U.N. has written a "harshly worded report" condemning the Zimbabwean government's razing of urban slums, a move which has left over 700,000 people homeless and without employment.
"While purporting to target illegal dwellings and structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit activities, (the operation) was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering," says the executive summary, obtained late Thursday by The Associated Press.
The report, using unusually harsh language for the United Nations, says the operation clearly violates international law and demands the government stop the destruction immediately.
While I applaud the condemnation of yet another atrocity perpetrated by Zimbabwe's "duly elected" president Robert Mugabe (and the thugs he employs to do his dirty work), I seriously doubt the "harshly worded report" will amount to more than a hill of beans when all is said and done.
The U.N. is a bunch of niminy piminy bureaucrats who crave world power, but don't know what to do with what little power they currently have. Consider the fact that they issued numerous resolutions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, warning him of dire consequences if he didn't disarm or allow arms inspectors in. He didn't. Yes, there were dire consequences, but who dished them out? The U.S., Britain, Italy, Poland and others who joined an alliance to stamp out the evil perpetrated and rooted in Iraq. What did the U.N. do? Kofi Annan called the war "illegal." Thanks for the help, Kofi.
The U.N. is also quite unable to do what it should be best at doing, which is distributing humanitarian aid to nations in need. Consider the flop which was the Oil-for-Food program (it ended up lining the pockets of both Saddam Hussein and U.N. bureaucrats) and the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by U.N. "peacekeepers" who were there (ostensibly) to protect them.
Let's see...U.N. peacekeepers rape women and children but no one demands that they get out of the Congo (or elsewhere where innocents are vulnerable), while American soldiers legitimately interrogate prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay and people are shouting that we need to close the facility down.
What's up with that?
So here we have another U.N. proclamation condemning the evil, brutal actions of another Third World despot, but what will be done about it? The U.N. is basically like an ineffectual parent: the kind who threatens all sorts of punishment if the rules are broken, but ultimately is too wimpy to follow through. The child then continues with more and more outrageous behavior until he is completely out of control and the parent throws up his hands and says, "I don't know what went wrong."
We'll see if the U.N. follows up this "report" with any action. But I doubt it.
Posted by at July 25, 2005 08:36 PM
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Comments
You requested the follow up to what is going on at the UN with regards to the Zimbabwe situation.
Find the links the this weeks events in Geneva below.
First a NGO Coalition Urges U.N. Human Rights Body in Geneva to Intervene in Zimbabwe Human Rights Violations
(http://www.unwatch.org/level2/speech.html)
Then Zimbabwe Urged U.N. Rights Body to Dismiss Allegations (http://www.unwatch.org/speeches/Pr030805.html)
Posted by: Michael W. Inlander at August 5, 2005 12:08 PM