UN Troops in Mali Slaughter Civilian Protesters

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As outrage and unrest in Mali against the brutal United Nations military occupation grow stronger, UN troops responded to civilian protests this week by shooting and killing unarmed demonstrators, according to witnesses quoted in international media reports and a UN spokesman. While reports vary, at least three protesters were reportedly killed and many more wounded, with other sources reporting that even more civilians have been massacred by UN “peacekeepers” amid the recent unrest. In fact, as The New American reported in early 2013, UN-backed military forces in Mali have also been involved in widespread summary executions and mass human-rights abuses directed at the civilian population. Increasingly brutal UN forces have also been implicated in atrocities — murder, rape, and more; even against children — all across Africa and beyond.

Under the guise of propping up an illegitimate regime that seized power in a 2012 coup led by a U.S government-trained officer, the UN Security Council purported to authorize a UN military invasion of Mali. The main targets of the Obama-backed UN war were supposed to be “Islamic militants” (armed amid the UN and Obama “regime change” scheme in Libya) opposed to the coup regime who were allegedly perpetrating abuses in the vast Malian north. In reality, however, it now appears that a key focal point of UN and “international community” ire were long-oppressed nomadic Tuareg tribesmen, some of whom have been slaughtered by UN forces in recent weeks. Seeking an independent homeland dubbed Azawad free from the control of the corrupt coup regime operating in the capital city of Bamako in the South, Tuareg rebels declared independence, only to become targets of ruthless UN military forces.

The latest killings of civilians by UN troops occurred on January 27 in the northern Malian town of Gao. According to witnesses quoted by Reuters, at least three people were killed when UN “peacekeepers” fired live ammunition at the crowd to supposedly “disperse” protesters. One source cited by the news agency said UN military forces began shooting bullets at protesters after first tear gassing them. The man said he saw a dead protester who had been shot in the face by the global organization’s “peace” troops. A second witness told Reuters that he saw four dead protesters shot by the UN, as well as numerous wounded victims who were taken to a nearby hospital. Two independent witnesses quoted by the Associated Press also confirmed that UN troops fired into the civilian crowd protesting UN scheming.

A man described by Reuters as a “Malian military source” also described the horrors. “UN forces panicked and they opened fire on the protesters,” the military man was quoted as saying by the news agency. “There are already three dead and many injured.” Local hospital officials were reportedly not available to comment on the number of victims wounded by UN fire, Reuters reported. Iranian state-run news agency Press TV, however, quoted a medical official at the morgue in Gao as saying that there were “at least three dead protesters,” some killed by gunshot wounds, in addition to “several serious injuries.” More information is still emerging and the death toll may still go higher.

The UN, as it often does — at least until the world is presented with irrefutable evidence of its crimes — originally denied, through a spokesman, that UN troops murdered civilian protesters. Olivier Salgado, speaking for the UN’s so-called “Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali” (MINUSMA), at first confirmed to Reuters that UN troops fired “warning shots,” but said the mission headquarters in Bamako did not have information about the killings. “We are trying to understand why the Malian security detail that was with the protest withdrew,” he claimed, adding two UN “police officers” were “injured.” Later, as the UN killings of unarmed protesters became too hard to conceal, the same spokesman admitted to the AP that UN troops had killed at least two protesters and wounded six. However, he claimed protesters had thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails at UN forces, prompting the deadly response.

According to news reports, the most recent protests against UN military occupation began after globalist forces tried to create what was described in the press as a “temporary security zone” in which only troops under UN command would be allowed to keep and bear arms. The UN mission’s efforts to establish the so-called “buffer zone” followed armed clashes between nomadic Tuareg rebels and UN troops. Last week, the UN’s self-styled global military was exposed using helicopter gunships and missiles to massacre Tuaregs from the air as the alleged “rebels” seeking independence from the regime in Bamako were traveling by car. After the killings were reported in the international press, the UN claimed it was forced to fire six missiles at the Tuaregs to “protect civilians.” It was not clear how killing civilians served to protect civilians.

That deadly UN helicopter attack on alleged Tuareg “rebels” helped spark a wave of protests against the UN military occupation last week. Media reports said hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children, occupied an airport commandeered by UN forces in the town of Kidal. UN troops responded to outraged and horrified civilian protesters in that incident by firing shots into the air, Reuters reported. The demonstrators, furious about recent UN killings of their countrymen, reportedly threw stones and burned UN assets such as generators and tents housing occupation troops. A resident who spoke to the news agency said protesters “are calling on MINUSMA to leave” and that the people of the region “don’t want them here.”

Eventually, the protesters in Kidal were able to tear down UN flags and replace them with the Azawad flag, the name of the independent homeland that Tuaregs are hoping to create for themselves in northern Mali despite the terror campaign unleashed on them by the UN and the illegitimate regime it supports in Bamako. Leaders of the Tuareg independence movement say it is time for the UN to get out. “Today it is more urgent than ever to review the rule of the MINUSMA in Mali,” said Tuareg spokesman Mossa Ag Attaher in a press conference last week in Morocco, adding that his people would be boycotting UN-run “peace” talks set to take place in Algeria next month.

As The New American reported in January of 2013, UN- and Obama-backed forces in Mali were accused by human rights groups at the time of slaughtering innocent civilians. Among other outrages and war crimes, military forces backed by the global organization were accused of summarily executing civilians, plundering victims who happened to belong to the wrong ethnic group, torturing and disappearing opponents of the UN-backed coup regime in Bamako, indiscriminate shelling of Tuareg nomad camps, mass murder, killing the livestock on which the nomads depend, and more. UN and Western officials were well aware of the horrors being perpetrated by their ruthless allies on the ground, yet claimed that it was up to the coup regime in Bamako to stop it.

Of course, UN troops have a long and sordid history of similar brutality — especially across Africa, as The New American has documented extensively. In the nearby nation of Ivory Coast, for example, the UN — again with full support from the Obama administration — backed brutal Islamist militias to overthrow the Christian president of the country. After the disputed election, the Supreme Court ruled that the Christian president had won, but the UN, French authorities, and Obama disagreed, waging a brutal war to install a Muslim central banker as president. The UN “regime change” campaign left thousands of innocent Christians massacred throughout the country — oftentimes hacked to death with machetes. The new UN-installed regime promptly began shutting down newspapers critical of the new “president” while arresting dissidents en masse. One U.S. senator even described the UN- and Obama-backed campaign in the Ivory Coast as a “reign of terror.”

Systematic sexual exploitation of civilians by UN forces is also common. Just in the Ivorian town Toulepleu, for example, a poll conducted by the non-profit Save the Children revealed that eight out of 10 minor girls admitted to regularly being raped and forced into sexual acts by UN soldiers. “They grabbed me and threw me to the ground and they forced themselves on me,” an Ivorian girl known as “Elizabeth,” just 13 years old when she was gang-raped by UN troops, recounted to the BBC in 2008. “I tried to escape but there were 10 of them and I could do nothing…. I was terrified. Then they just left me there bleeding.” Similar horror stories have emerged from virtually every nation occupied by the global body’s “peace” armies. Virtually no UN soldiers have been held accountable, let alone the UN itself.

Going further back, history is also replete with UN-sponsored atrocities. In Rwanda, for example, UN “disarmament” bureaucrats forcibly disarmed civilians, many of whom were later exterminated in the government-backed 1994 genocide. As far back as the early 1960s, meanwhile, the UN waged a ruthless war against the anti-communist people of Katanga in a bid to force them to submit to a bloodthirsty communist dictator. Once the population was subjugated and terrorized into submission, the global entity perpetrated ghastly war crimes — documented in numerous books and documentaries — including massacres of civilians, attacks on medical personnel, and more. Systematic atrocities have also been perpetrated by UN troops or UN-backed forces more recently in Somalia, Congo, Haiti, and beyond.

The savage track record of UN military scheming is long, bloody, and undeniable, with Mali being merely the latest nation to suffer. Yet, instead of reining in UN forces, the Obama administration is actively working to further empower them with even more U.S. wealth, technology, and military assets. It is past time for Congress to immediately halt all U.S. support for the UN and its brutal “peace” military before the global organization claims even more innocent victims.

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected]