Destaque Internacional - Current Reports - Year VI - No. 135 - Person responsible: Javier González, Reconquista 417, Buenos Aires / April 2, 2004.-

As an example of the United Nation's "farce", Reporters Without Borders (RWB) mentions the UN's Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, presently holding its 60th session until April 24, 2004. Among the 53 countries represented in this body, 25 have not even ratified a number of conventions and treaties about human rights. Last year, Lybia was elected president of the Commission and among its members appear four countries (China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia) whose governments are considered as "the most repressive in the world."

"The foxes are in charge of the chicken coop"
The aforementioned, adds RWB, creates an "absurd system" which operates "rather like asking thieves to sit in judgment over criminals." José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), was no less severe in his criticism: "The foxes are in charge of the chicken coop. The world's worst human rights violators protect themselves, and one another. They act like a true mafia."

RWB made public at the same time the work entitled "Cuba: The Black Book'", in which it denounces the "true face" and totalitarian "operation" of the 44-year old communist regime on the prison-island of the Caribbean. RWB also sent a letter of protest to Marco Troncetti Provera, president of Telecom Italia, which owns 30% of the stocks of Etecsa, a state communications company in charge of censoring telephone and Internet in Cuba.

RWB has proposed that only those governments who have ratified all international instruments pertaining to human rights could become members of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights. In addition, RWB proposed the elimination of the "no action" motions, which block any discussion of countries that extensively violate human rights.

The communist regime in China has been very much in favor of these "motions" with the approval, through action or omission, of important governments in the western world. In an interview with the journalist Andrés Oppenheimer, who recently wrote an article "U.N. Human Rights Commission is a joke", leaders of human rights entities stated that "neither the United States nor the 15 members of the European Union have so far supported a resolution condemning China's human rights abuses."

In reality, either the United Nations must end the prevailing "hypocrisy" in its body, or that "hypocrisy" will result in the end of the United Nations itself.

Documents recently found in files of Saddam Hussein's regime indicate that the United Nations gave this regime the management of the program Oil for Food, with which the dictator would have selected who bought oil from Iraq and who would sell food and medicines to the country in contracts which approached $100,000,000. Benon Sevan, director of the aforementioned program and the right arm of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Anan, would be one of the major people implicated, according to what the renowned journalist, William Safire, who refers to this scandal as a literal "Kofigate." Safire adds that "France and Russia had their hands in the kickback". This could explain the opposition of both governments in support measures against Saddam Hussein.

Speaking recently at the Security Council of the United Nations, Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, accused the international organization of allowing Saddam Hussein to stay in power for decades: the United Nations failed in rescuing Iraq from "a murderous tyranny" that lasted for 35 years and "today we are unearthing thousands of victims in a horrible testimony of that failure.

These news stories should occupy huge headlines and should deserve editorials in the communication media of the entire world, especially when several of them originate from a known independent journalist source, such as Reporters Without Borders. Nevertheless, this is not what has occurred, with some exceptions that confirm the rule. In said broadcasting organizations, there seems to be a mysterious censorship to news whose broadcast would harm the left; censorship analogous to that of China, Cuba, Vietnam, Zimbabwe etc., although exercised in a more subtle and less visible manner. Divulging this type of news contributes to neutralizing those unacceptable forms of misinformative coercion.