UN Killed Thousands of Haitians With Cholera, Claims Immunity

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The United Nations has finally admitted what everyone else already knew: The UN’s scandal-plagued “peacekeeping” troops introduced cholera to Haiti by dumping raw sewage in rivers and canals, killing tens of thousands and making nearly a million more very sick. All of it happened under former President Bill Clinton’s leadership as UN envoy.

Despite announcing a plot to impose a “significant new set of UN actions” on Haiti amid the outbreak, the controversial global body continues to claim “immunity” in court for its crimes in Haiti — crimes ranging from extreme criminal negligence, at best, in dumping toxic sewage in public water, to deliberately slaughtering unarmed civilians, to the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse of children across the poverty-stricken nation by UN military forces occupying it. A U.S. court agreed with the UN and the Obama administration that the global entity, largely dominated by unfree governments and dictatorships, is above the law.

At the start of the cholera disaster in 2010, Bill Clinton, husband of current Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, was serving as the UN “Special Envoy for Haiti” overseeing alleged UN “relief” efforts following an earthquake there. In a press release, Clinton’s UN office boasted that the former president would “help coordinate the work of UN agencies and other international partners in Haiti.” And, while he apparently did not have operational control of the UN “peace” forces there, the statement said Clinton would “ensure coherence of the United Nations system.”

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“I am confident that President Clinton will bring energy, dynamism and focus to the task of mobilizing international support for Haiti’s economic recovery and reconstruction,” said UN boss Ban Ki Moon in 2009 upon appointing Clinton to the post. Instead, Clinton and his UN mission brought a deadly cholera epidemic, brutal and systemic sexual abuse of women and children by UN “peace” troops, and widespread slaughter of Haitian civilians by UN forces. Impunity continues to rein, with the UN citing “diplomatic immunity” and refusing to address the claims or even appear in court.

After years of denying responsibility for the deadly cholera outbreak, the public admissions of responsibility have been a long time coming. The change in tone began on August 8, with a report sent to UN chief Ban by UN adviser and law professor Philip Alston that was subsequently leaked to the press. The UN “special rapporteur” said, among other things, that the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti starting in 2010 “would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations.”

In short, it appears that almost 500 UN “peace” troops from Nepal sent to occupy Haiti were allowing their raw sewage to go into a river that Haitians used for drinking water, bathing, washing, and more. Studies showed the disaster could have been averted for as little as $2,000.

Officially, almost 10,000 Haitians have died amid the epidemic, though studies and experts suggest many more victims have actually succumbed to the disease spread by the UN — potentially as many as 30,000. At least 800,000 have been infected with the disease, which first struck after UN soldiers polluted rivers and canals across the country with human waste.

If the UN were to compensate all of its victims, the tab as of now would reach $40 billion, according to Alston. That total does not include the Haitians who are “certain to die and be infected” in the coming years. Indeed, now that cholera has been introduced, experts say it will be a perpetual problem.

Alston also lambasted the UN’s “cholera policy” in Haiti, calling it “morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating.” “It is also entirely unnecessary,” he argued in the confidential report.

Citing the UN’s refusal to take responsibility and compensate its victims, Alston blasted the hypocrisy, saying the tactic “upholds a double standard according to which the U.N. insists that member states respect human rights, while rejecting any such responsibility for itself.” The policy also “provides highly combustible fuel for those who claim that U.N. peacekeeping operations trample on the rights of those being protected.”

In an e-mail to the New York Times, UN boss Ban Ki Moon’s deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, said that, “over the past year, the U.N. has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera.” To that end, a “new response will be presented publicly within the next two months, once it has been fully elaborated, agreed with the Haitian authorities and discussed with member states.” He also claimed that Ban’s office “wanted to take this opportunity to welcome this vital report.”

Ironically, though, more information about the extent of the problem also began slowly trickling out last month — after a year of withholding the crucial evidence. According to a report by the UN’s investigations department, known as the Office of Internal Oversight Services, UN forces across Haiti for years dumped sewage into public Haitian canals.

They also ignored urgent warnings from laboratories about the fecal contamination, failed to maintain water-treatment plants at camps for UN “peace” troops, and much more. Taken together, the report provides smoking-gun evidence of criminal negligence at the very least — assuming there were no ulterior motives in an organization well-known for its fanatical obsession with reducing the human population, and particularly the number of Africans.

Similar UN reports documenting similar criminal negligence by UN “peace” missions around the world have also appeared in recent months. Basically, it seems that wherever UN troops go, they dump their waste in whatever way they feel like, creating massive health hazards to the people they are ostensibly supposed to protect. Yet, in Haiti, as in so many other cases, the UN simply lied all along, claiming implausibly that the cholera outbreak was not necessarily its fault. The UN also continues to hide behind “diplomatic immunity” to avoid accountability for the massive human tragedy it unleashed on the people of Haiti.

Even establishment-minded analysts who have followed the situation were shocked. “Once you start lying about something at the beginning, once you start covering up what you’ve done, literally, I mean I watched the soldiers at that base dig up their pipes and literally cover up evidence, once you start doing that, it’s very hard to stop,” longtime Haiti journalist Jonathan Katz was quoted as saying. “Because then not only do you have to admit what you did in the first place, you then have to admit also, you’ve been lying about it for all these years.”

Accountability is urgently needed, he continued. “There need to be mechanisms,” said Katz. “There need to be systems to hold powerful people, powerful countries, powerful entities, responsible for the things they do in places where people are very, very vulnerable.”

The UN disagrees, trying to claim immunity from laws and total impunity for its crimes. Thousands of Haitian victims of the UN’s disease-spreading peace troops have banded together in an effort to sue the global outfit in U.S. court. However, the arrogant UN has refused to even appear in court, claiming diplomatic immunity.

Instead, the Obama administration has deployed Justice Department lawyers to court to protect the UN from accountability — leaving Haitians to die by the thousands as the UN squanders tax money on first-class airfare and luxury hotels in exotic locations around the world to fight largely imaginary boogeymen. On August 18, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with Obama and the UN and dismissed the lawsuit. The Haitian victims and their lawyers are considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Aside from the deadly introduction of disease, the UN’s “peace” forces have justifiably developed a reputation as savage predators who exploit and terrorize the local population. As The New American reported last year, UN troops are now infamous in Haiti for raping and sexually abusing women and even children — all with complete impunity.

In one particularly grotesque documented case, UN troops kidnapped a mentally handicapped young boy at age eight, then brutally raped him for five years. When the abuse was reported to the commander, who was also abusing the boy, the UN troops hired another kidnapper to hide their young victim from outside investigators. The perpetrators, claiming “immunity,” were simply sent home, with the connivance of senior UN officials.

Another Haitian boy was raped by UN troops on video camera in an incident that sparked a global outcry. Similar horrors are widespread in UN “peace” missions all over the world, from trafficking child-sex slaves out of the former Yugoslavia to raping young children across Africa and Asia. In one Ivory Coast town, a survey revealed that eight out of 10 underage girls reported being regularly sexually abused and raped by UN forces.

In addition to widespread rape and sexual abuse of Haitians, UN forces have also been known to slaughter Haitians with impunity. In 2006, for example, UN forces entered Haiti’s Cité Soleil community, and began massacring random people — including children and pregnant women — as a form of collective punishment following a protest the UN was unhappy about. Similar massacres have been perpetrated by UN troops before and after, sometimes involving the murder of dozens of civilians or more.

And like with the cholera epidemic the UN caused, instead of dealing with the ghastly and systemic abuses perpetrated under its latest decade-long occupation, UN military officials simply try their best to cover it up. When whistleblowers try to expose the crime and lawlessness, they are ruthlessly persecuted by top officials. Impunity reigns for the perpetrators. But those who try to stop it are targeted for destruction. Such was the case for Anders Kompass, who reported peace troops raping children in the Central African Republic.

It is time for U.S. taxpayers to stop funding the UN’s deadly and grotesque crime spree. The best way to do that would be to pursue an American exit from the dictators club — also known in Congress and beyond as an “Amexit.” Legislation already in Congress, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (HR 1205), would end U.S. membership in the UN and evict its spy-infested headquarters from American soil. All that is needed for the bill to become law is sufficient public pressure on Congress. In the meantime, lawmakers should cut off all funds for the corrupt and deadly UN as soon as possible.

Photo of a UN “peacekeepr,” from Nepal, in Haiti in 2010: AP Images

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].

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