Sri Lankan, other UN troops brutalize Haitian children…
Sadly, the world has more cruelty and hateful instances of depravity than most care to admit. Even sadder is when the same acts of cruelty and depravity are committed by so-called “peacemakers” against the likes of defenseless children.
Such is the case brought to light by Associated Press reporter Paisley Dodds of soldiers of the Sri Lankan army currently assigned to the UN command in Haiti.
As uncovered by the AP’s former London bureau chief, Sri Lankan troops promised Haitian boys and girls as young as 12 “cookies and other snacks” in exchange for sex.
Despite the killer earthquake in 2010 that killed between 220,000-316,000 people, the small Caribbean country has essentially become a vassal state to the United Nations.
With the UN firmly in control, nearly 5,000 police and uniformed soldiers from over 100 various nations are (at least on paper) subject to the laws and directives of their home countries. Yet according to more than a few, the United Nations troops are really answerable to the UN commanders on-scene in Haiti, as well at the bureaucrats back in New York City.
While Haitian children literally scavenge through garbage heaps for something to take away the hunger pangs for at least a short while, ill-disciplined, poorly trained and heavily armed “peacekeepers” are sitting in the proverbial catbird seat when it comes to taking advantage of the starving.
As (partially) reported by Dodd;
“I did not even have breasts,” said a girl, known as V01 — Victim No. 1. She told U.N. investigators that over the next three years, from ages 12 to 15, she had sex with nearly 50 peacekeepers, including a “Commandant” who gave her 75 cents. Sometimes she slept in U.N. trucks on the base next to the decaying resort, whose once-glamorous buildings were being overtaken by jungle.
Justice for victims like V01 is rare. An Associated Press investigation of U.N. missions during the past 12 years found nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world — signaling the crisis is much larger than previously known. More than 300 of the allegations involved children, the AP found, but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time.
The AP interviewed alleged victims, current and former U.N. officials and investigators and sought answers from 23 countries on the number of peacekeepers who faced such allegations and, what if anything, was done to investigate. With rare exceptions, few nations responded to repeated requests, while the names of those found guilty are kept confidential, making accountability impossible to determine.
Here in Haiti, at least 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers exploited nine children in a sex ring from 2004 to 2007, according to an internal U.N. report obtained by the AP. In the wake of the report, 114 peacekeepers were sent home. None was ever imprisoned.
In one particularly grim case in Haiti, a teenage boy said he was gang-raped in 2011 by Uruguayan peacekeepers who filmed the alleged assault on a cellphone. Dozens of Haitian women also say they were raped, and dozens more had what is euphemistically called “survival sex” in a country where most people live on less than $2.50 a day, the AP found.
With the story still breaking, Dodd notes that at least one US Senator is fighting mad;
“Imagine if the U.N. was going to the United States and raping children and bringing cholera,” [Haitian lawyer Mario] Joseph said in Port-au-Prince. “Human rights aren’t just for rich white people.”
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker agrees. The Tennessee Republican, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been calling for reforms in the United Nations. He may well get them under President Donald Trump, whose administration has proposed a 31 percent reduction to the U.S. foreign aid and diplomacy budget. Corker and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley want a review of all missions.
Corker recalled his disgust at hearing of the U.N. sexual abuse cases uncovered last year in Central African Republic.
“If I heard that a U.N. peacekeeping mission was coming near my home in Chattanooga,” he told AP, “I’d be on the first plane out of here to go back and protect my family.”
