UN “Peace” Forces in Haiti Prey on Civilians, Children

The New American – Kathie Klarreich – February 18, 2015

Rather than protecting local civilians, United Nations “peacekeeping” forces in Haiti are behaving as ruthless predators that systematically prey on Haitians, raping and sexually abusing even children with impunity, according to a new report detailing the horrors. Instead of dealing with the ghastly and systemic abuses perpetrated under its latest decade-long occupation, UN military officials seek to cover it up and even retaliate against whistleblowers. On top of that, the global outfit’s “peace” armies have been spreading deadly diseases among the traumatized population — particularly cholera, which has killed almost 10,000 Haitians so far. All the while, the UN continues to avoid any semblance of accountability under the guise of “immunity.

According to the report, when UN peacekeepers were not partying and enjoying themselves at the beach, partly at U.S. taxpayer expense, many of them were sexually exploiting children, trafficking drugs, hiring prostitutes, and more. “For less than $5, the Sri Lankan soldiers exploited the very population they were sent to safeguard,” wrote investigative journalist Kathie Klarreich. “They conveniently disregarded the trampled condition of the fence surrounding their military base so that Haitian boys and girls could crawl under and over it, which they did with great frequency. In their wake, they left behind condoms, which were noted by UN investigators when they finally cracked down on the security breach and the flagrant violation of UN policy.”

The UN, of course, knew full well what its “peace” troops were engaged in. Klarreich describes a team of UN investigators who investigated the UN’s Sri Lankan troops in Haiti and “found that transactional sex among the peacekeepers was rampant.” Over the years, Klarreich reported, “rotating peacekeepers from Sri Lanka gave the new recruits the SIM cards that held the names and numbers of those willing to engage in sex, including boys and girls just entering their teens.” Often they met in the UN military base, other times they raped children in UN vehicles, with fellow UN soldiers keeping a lookout from the UN’s observation tower, according to a UN investigator cited in Klarreich’s chilling investigation.

“Transactional sex with peacekeepers isn’t new, nor is sexual exploitation and abuse — S.E.A., in UN jargon,” Klarreich reported. “The first widespread exposure of the practice, including exploitation of children, pornography, trafficking and sexual assault, occurred in the early 1990s. Then there was the sex-trafficking in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Kosovo.”

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thenewamerican.com/world-news/item/20141-un-peace-forces-in-haiti-prey-on-civilians-children

The Whistleblower – The Truth About the United Nations

UN Peacekeepers and Human Trafficking

January 15, 2012 – The Guardian

The Whistleblower is a shocking film that reveals how Balkan peacekeepers turned a blind eye to kidnapping, torture and rape. But these abuses still go on.

We do not see the torture inflicted on one girl for trying to flee her captors, but we see the tears of her fellow slaves forced to watch. We see the iron bar tossed on to the cellar floor when the punishment is over, and we know what has happened.

The Whistleblower spares you little. It is a film about that most depraved of crimes: trafficking women for enslaved sex, rape and even murder.

As a dramatised portrayal of reality, however, The Whistleblower is “a day at the beach compared to what happened in real life”, says its director, Larysa Kondracki. “We show what is just about permissible to show. We couldn’t possibly include the three-week desensitisation period, when they burn the girls in particular places. We couldn’t really capture the hopelessness of life these women are subjected to.”

Starring Rachel Weisz, The Whistleblower, released tomorrow on DVD, is the most searing drama-documentary of recent years and has won many prizes. But more important than the accolades is that everything in the film is true. The film deals with enslavement and rape in Bosnia, not during wartime 20 years ago but during the peace. Worse, not only were the enslaved women’s “clients” soldiers and police officers – so too were the traffickers, protected at the top of the United Nations operation in Bosnia.

Such was the crisis sparked by the ensuing film last year that the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was obliged in October to stage a special screening and to pledge action. But now it emerges that senior UN officials tried to belittle the film and play it down, while the whistleblower herself warns that, for all the UN’s professed resolve, “unfortunately, the widespread horror is already there. This is not going to be simple or a quick fix.”

Moreover, the UN has shut down effective anti-trafficking initiatives by its own gender affairs chief in Bosnia.

Kathryn Bolkovac, from Nebraska, was sacked by Dyncorp of Virginia, to which peacekeeping police work in Bosnia had been outsourced; her employer claimed she had filed erroneous time-sheets, but was challenged by Bolkovac and overruled by a British employment tribunal in 2002.

Speaking to the Observer last week, Bolkovac said: “The thing that stood out about these cases in Bosnia, and cases that have been reported in other [UN] mission areas, is … that police and humanitarian workers were frequently involved in not only the facilitation of forced sexual abuse, and the use of children and young women in brothels, but in many instances became involved in the trade by racketeering, bribery and outright falsifying of documents as part of a broader criminal syndicate.”

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Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/15/bosnia-sex-trafficking-whistleblower

The Whistleblower

The Whistleblower – The truth about the United Nations from daki009 on Vimeo.

Video link: http://vimeo.com/60594944

In Bosnia in 1999, Kathryn Bolkovac, a U.N. peacekeeper whose post with the Intl. Police Task Force was arranged by DynCorp Inc., is assigned to run the IPTF office that investigates sex trafficking, domestic abuse and sexual assault. She ultimately alleges that peacekeepers, U.N. workers and international police are visiting brothels and facilitating sex trafficking by forging documents and aiding the illegal transport of woman into Bosnia. DynCorp responds by firing Bolkovac, who returns to the U.S. and files a wrongful termination case. She wins the suit but says she’s still blacklisted.