If United Nations “peacekeeping” troops were on their way to the United States, at least one U.S. senator would be on the first plane home to protect his family from them. His concern: the apparently never-ending supply of rapists, predators, and child molesters among the UN’s disgraced military forces.
That was the message delivered this week by U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during a hearing looking at the UN’s response — mostly persecuting those who blow the whistle — to the growing scandal surrounding predatory UN soldiers who rape women and children worldwide with impunity. If something does not change, U.S. lawmakers said the UN may lose American taxpayer support for its Obama-backed “peace” armies. But even that is not enough.
Horrifying UN abuse of civilians is not new. Indeed, going back to the earliest of the UN “peace” missions, UN troops brutalized and slaughtered aid workers and the civilian population of Katanga when the province refused to submit to a UN- Soviet-backed communist dictator. More recently, a decade-old survey by the non-profit group Save the Children revealed that in one town in Ivory Coast, eight out of 10 underage girls were being raped and sexually exploited by UN forces occupying the nation. Across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and even the Balkans in Europe, UN troops have been exposed being involved in systematic abuses of women and children, ranging from rape and killing protesters to sex-slavery and human trafficking. Virtually nobody, top to bottom, has been held accountable.
The Senate hearing this week focused primarily on abuses perpetrated by international troops in the Central African Republic. The New American and other sources have been reporting on new cases of rape and exploitation by “peace” troops that have been surfacing at an astounding pace. When a whistle-blower handed documents about the horrors to French prosecutors, including the rape of children under 10 years old, the UN went ballistic — but not how you might think.
Instead of cracking down on the heavily armed perverts and predators wearing the UN’s infamous “blue helmets,” it launched an “investigation” of the brave official who exposed it, Anders Kompass, and even had him escorted from his office under armed guard. Leaked e-mails later exposed top UN officials conspiring at a secret meeting in Turin, Italy, to silence and destroy the whistle-blower. Since then, dozens more cases of “peacekeeper” rape and sexual abuse of women and children have surfaced, and nobody appears to have been held accountable.
At another recent congressional hearing on UN abuses, U.S. lawmakers told The New American that the UN’s persecution of whistle-blowers in that case and others was unacceptable and would be dealt with, potentially by withholding funding from the UN if necessary. Several current and former UN officials, meanwhile, have told The New American that the responsibility for the abuse scandals and the lawless persecution of honest officials goes straight to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. It appears more than a few lawmakers agreed. Sen. Corker, for example, blasted Ban as “inept” in the handling of the sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) scandals. American taxpayers pay more than anyone, contributing more than a fourth of the UN’s almost $10 billion “peacekeeping” budget.
Echoing widespread concerns around the world, Corker also hinted at just how the scandals have affected the public view of UN “peace” troops in America and worldwide. “If I heard right now that a UN peacekeeping mission was going to North Chattanooga today, which is where my wife is, I would be on the first plane out of here to go home and protect her,” he explained in comments during the hearing that were also posted in a press release on his official website. “I would drop what I was doing. I would take the next flight home.”
Corker also suggested that something needed to be done, and expressed hope that lawmakers and U.S. authorities could find a way to stop the abuse. “I am disgusted by the actions of UN peacekeepers that American taxpayers are paying for, and I hope that somehow we’ll figure out a way to reel this in,” said the senator, whose cumulative Freedom Index score is 66 percent.
The committee chairman appeared especially outraged with UN chief Ban, who has done little so far to halt the brutality and horrors perpetrated by troops under his command. “What is wrong with the secretary-general of the UN?” Corker fumed during the hearing. “How do we put up with such inept leadership at the United Nations?” He pointed to a 10-year-old report offering recommendations for dealing with the systemic problem of predatory child-raping troops, and noted that the proposals were only now being implemented.
In the House of Representatives, the subcommittee on International Affairs held a similar hearing on UN “peacekeeper” rape and abuse at the same time. Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who chaired the hearing, recalled taking part in a hearing on the exact same subject a decade ago. He said supposed protectors should never be predators. At a hearing last month on UN persecution of whistle-blowers, Smith told The New American that Congress was aware of the abuses and was willing to use funding as leverage to rein in the UN. So far, though, little serious action has been forthcoming.
A spokesman for UN boss Ban, Stéphane Dujarric, acknowledged over 100 recently uncovered allegations of sexual abuse against UN forces. “I would not be surprised if that number goes up a bit,” he added. However, he also played defense for Ban and the UN, saying his boss was “determined to continue to shine a spotlight on the scourge of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers and hold those responsible accountable.” Dujarric also said no one person could lead the fight alone, though current and former UN officials and lawmakers have put the blame on Ban for the scandals. It is true, though, that the problems predate Ban’s scandal-plagued tenure by generations.
The UN said “peacekeeping” troops supplied by the regimes ruling South Africa, Morocco, and the Democratic Republic of Congo were those most often implicated in the abuses. French forces have also been involved in the scandals, despite UN efforts to cover up the abuses and persecute those who blew the whistle on it. Part of the supposed approach to stopping the problem of predatory UN troops, which has plagued the UN since its earliest “peace” missions, is to “name and shame” the governments whose troops rape, abuse, and terrorize civilians. But so far, the strategy has had essentially no impact, according to critics.
Among those testifying at the hearings was UN whistle-blower Miranda Brown, a former senior official with the UN “Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights,” which often investigates (and covers up) the abuses. She noted that the problem of sexual abuse by UN forces is “vastly under-reported, with bottlenecks for reporting at various stages inside and outside the UN.” In other words, the ghastly horrors that the public knows about are just the tip of the iceberg of savage UN abuses against civilians.
The former UN official also told lawmakers that those in charge of investigating the abuses fear for their own job security and even their physical safety. Brown lost her job at the UN office after supporting Kompass, the UN official who first blew the whistle on child-raping UN troops in the Central African Republic. Despite a global outcry over the scandals and persecution of whistle-blowers, including involvement by the U.S. Congress, Brown has still not been reinstated at her job. She said the persecution of Kompass and other whistle-blowers “is having and will continue to have a serious chilling effect on the reporting of abuses in peacekeeping missions.” Perhaps that was the point.
Obama administration officials did acknowledge the enormity of the problem. Ambassador Isobel Coleman, who handles UN management and reform issues at the U.S. government’s mission to the UN, noted that the “the culture of impunity” in what the UN calls “peacekeeping” has “persisted for too long.” She also said she did not think “ineptitude” was the problem, but rather, an unwillingness to hold predators and criminals accountable. But she claimed the Obama administration, which despite the abuse has for years been working to super-size the UN’s military, was working to do that.
In one of his speeches outlining what he called a “New World Order,” then-President George H.W. Bush said a “credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.” On the American side, the top “UN founder,” who went on to become the UN’s first secretary general, was Alger Hiss. He was ultimately convicted for lying about being a Soviet spy. The murderous regime in Moscow was also among the key “UN founders.”
Today, little has changed. The scandal surrounding child-raping UN forces and Ban’s handling of his predatory troops comes as the UN’s member governments and dictatorships work on selecting the next secretary-general. The current frontrunner, as described by establishment media outlets and the expensive PR operation behind the campaign, is Bulgarian Communist Irina Bokova, who as The New American reported this month, has surrounded herself with known former spies and agents for the mass-murdering regime that enslaved Bulgaria and murdered hundreds of thousands of people in the process. Ban, meanwhile, recently celebrated child rapist and homosexual activist Harvey Milk, some of whose underage victims went on to commit suicide, as a human rights hero.
Why humanity would want a “New World Order” based on the vision of the UN’s founders, as Bush put it, or its current leaders and members, implemented at the barrel of a predatory UN “peace” army’s gun, remains officially unexplained by NWO promoters from both parties. But it should nevertheless trouble anyone and everyone who values liberty and human decency.
The globalist establishment behind the UN has proposed giving the UN even more power as a way of supposedly dealing with its child-raping armies and the impunity that surrounds them. Writing in Newsweek and on the globalist Council on Foreign Relations’ website, Stewart Patrick, the CFR director of International Institutions and Global Governance, even claimed the UN should be given its own court system with the power to prosecute even American troops. The Obama administration has also been working overtime to increase the power, weaponry, prestige, and funding for the UN’s disgraced military, even as the sexual scandals continue to grow.
Of course, giving the “dictators club” more power to reward it for letting its troops rape and abuse women and children around the world with impunity is beyond absurd — it is a smack in the face to the countless victims and their families. Among those testifying at the hearings this week, a variety of other non-solutions were also offered up by bureaucrats and “think tank” experts — proposals that will at best solve nothing, and at worst make the problem even more horrendous. It is time to try something new.
If Corker and other U.S. lawmakers are serious about reining in the UN and its predatory armed forces, there is a much better, simpler, and cheaper way. Right now, a bill to restore American sovereignty and withdraw from the UN is sitting in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. That may not fix the UN’s predatory “peace” armies, but it will at least ensure that Americans are no longer complicit in funding the grotesque abuses, all while saving taxpayers billions of dollars every year. Plus, without U.S. participation and money, it is likely that the UN itself, a key tool for dictators and globalists to spread and legitimize evil, would collapse in on itself. That would be wonderful news for humanity — and especially for the people still being “helped” by the UN’s predators in blue.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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UN Panics Amid Growing Scandal on Child Rape by “Peace” Troops
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CFR: To Deal With Child-raping UN Troops, UN Needs More Power
Sex Abuse by UN “Peace” Troops Becoming Global Scandal
Congressman Mike Rogers Introduces Bill to Get U.S. Out of UN
UN-backed Forces Slaughter Christians in Ivory Coast
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