[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 159 (Friday, November 16, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2119]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          KOFI ANNAN AND UNITED NATIONS ARE STAINED WITH BLOOD

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 16, 2001

  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, now I think I've just about seen and heard 
everything: Kofi Annan and the United Nations being announced as joint 
recipients of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not saying there 
wasn't a time in the UN's history when it wasn't deserved. What I'm 
saying is I don't believe it's deserved right now. Instead, I believe 
that to award the UN and Kofi Annan now amounts to an insult to the 
millions that have died at the hands of the United Nations in recent 
years.
  Mr. Speaker, Kofi Annan and the United Nations are stained with the 
blood of millions of dead people.
  Let me tell you about some of their recent failures.
  Let me start with their greatest failure--Rwanda. The 1994 Rwandan 
genocide must amount to one of the greatest humanitarian failures of 
any generation. Kofi Annan was the Director of UN Peacekeeping based in 
New York and was personally responsible for the UN Peace Keeping force 
in Rwanda. The now famous informant Jean Pierre had warned Dallaire and 
the UN leadership of the coming mass slaughter but his information was 
cavalierly dismissed. Tragically, as had been predicted, Rwanda 
exploded into an orgy of violence the likes of which the last century 
had never seen. At the end of 100 days an estimated 1,000,000 Rwandan 
men, women, and children had been bludgeoned, macheted, and axed to 
death. The daily death rate was five times that of the Nazi industrial 
death camps. Instead of reinforcing the UN contingent in Kigali, the UN 
actually ordered the withdrawal of their troops. It was then that the 
killing in Kigali exploded. Of course, the US bears much of the blame 
for the UN's inaction.
  And now the much-celebrated International Tribunal for Rwanda has 
become yet another UN bureaucratic disaster. Repeated UN investigations 
have found widespread mismanagement, wastage, incompetence, and 
corruption. The Tribunal has prosecuted a fraction of the Rwandan 
genocide suspects it holds in custody. It has even been criticized by 
its own Appeal Court of prosecutorial incompetence and failing to 
observe elementary due process considerations. Sadly, the Tribunal, 
which should have brought justice to the region, has instead become 
another multi-million dollar UN boondoggle. Srebrenica, a name now 
associated with one of the worst crimes in Europe since WWII or as 
Judge Riad of the ICTY described it, ``. . . a place where thousands of 
men were executed, hundreds buried alive, men and women mutilated and 
slaughtered, children killed before their mother's eyes, and a 
grandfather was forced to eat the liver of his own grandson.'' These 
are truly scenes from hell written on the darkest pages of human 
history. The UN created a safe haven in Srebrenica and encouraged 
civilians to enter en masse so as to be under UN military protection. 
Only one condition applied--entry into the UN safe haven required 
Muslim fighters to surrender their weapons. This they did, hoping that 
if ever the need arose they would get them back. They were to be sorely 
disappointed on that score.
  When it became apparent that General Mladic was separating the men 
from the women and then killing them in the nearby fields, the Dutch UN 
troops began pleading for UN military support. But, just like Rwanda, 
the UN leadership once again became paralyzed and failed. They dithered 
over air strikes, they refused to send in troops to help the 
beleaguered Dutch and in the end, just as with Rwanda, the UN withdrew 
their troops. This permitted General Mladic to remove an estimated 
5,000-8,000 Muslims from in and around the UN compound in Potocari and 
slaughter them.
  To this day the United Nations and no UN official has ever been held 
criminally or civilly liable, let alone even publicly admonished, for 
their massive failures in Srebrenica. All the families of the thousands 
of victims can do now is pick up the pieces of their broken families 
and attempt to restart their lives.
  Mr. Speaker, sadly there is more.
  East Timor. In late August 1999, the UN and now Secretary General 
Annan, called for elections on the small island country of East Timor 
despite disturbing evidence that hard line elements in the Indonesian 
military were preparing to cause wide spread public disorder so as to 
disrupt the elections. The UN failed to provide adequate protection for 
the civilian population. Dili was burnt to the ground and East Timor 
was engulfed in violence. After weeks of killing and millions of 
dollars of damage, the Australian government sent in ground troops to 
restore order to East Timor; but by then, it was too late to save East 
Timor from UN bungling.
  Sierra Leone. So bad was the UN's conduct in Sierra Leone in June 
2000 that their long time supporter and friend, Medicins Sans 
Frontieres, felt compelled to speak out and complain. MSF complained 
bitterly that the UN troops fled a RUF attack on the Sierra Leonean 
town of Kabala.
  In so doing MSF said that the UN had failed its mandate to protect 
civilian populations, many of whom were sick women and malnourished 
children in the MSF hospital.
  Cambodia. There is now mounting evidence that UN Peacekeeping troops 
actually caused an explosion of AIDS in Cambodia in 1992. In January of 
this year Richard Holbrooke, the then US Ambassador to the UN, launched 
an unprecedented attack upon the UN during his last UTN address saying 
``. . . it would be the cruelest of ironies if people who had come to 
end war . . . were spreading the most deadly of diseases . . . it will 
kill more people and undermine more societies than even the most 
critical conflicts we discuss here.'' And despite Ambassador 
Holbrooke's warnings there are concerns that right now in East Timor UN 
staff could be causing yet another AIDS epidemic. Some things just 
never seem to change.
  Mr. Speaker, let me put it squarely on the record. I believe in the 
UN. I believe that our country should support the UN. But I do not 
think that we should blindly lend our support in the face of massive 
negligence.
  I think answers to these questions beg to be asked:
  After such repeated UN failures to act upon knowledge of impending 
humanitarian disasters, what forgiveness?
  After such repeated UN failures to discharge their sacred duties, 
what accountability?
  After such ongoing complicity by the UN in repeated slaughters, what 
punishment?

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