September 29, 2003
The United Nations new war crimes court has claimed its first Toronto victim.
Banro-Resource Corp. of Toronto is accused by U.N. "experts" of the plunder of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in central Africa. In its report, the UN hints about how profits helped fuel years of civil war.
With little media fanfare and no protests, the International Criminal Court (war crimes court) opened in The Hague last year. Now that it’s up and running, prosecutors have announced that they plan to investigate firms referred to them by UN "experts" who studied the conflict in the Congo.
Too bad Banro-Resource Corp., a gold mining company conducts business from Canadian rather than American soil. Spurned by the United States, which says outright that the tribunal will dabble in politically motivated prosecutions, the war crimes court can rightfully claim Canada as an already signed-up member.
Nor can Canadian citizens, caught up in this UN web, count on the fortitude of Canada’s Liberal, UN-fawning Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham.
Only last week, the minister was out there reaffirming Canada’s belief in the court. "We believe in these international tribunals and the way in which they get at the truth, and they (may) affect Canadians as time goes on, and we have to…defend what our conduct is and recognize there are consequences for our actions," Graham proclaimed, running between meetings during the UN General Assembly debate.
Given the UN’s documented conduct in 1994, the UN should be the first candidate to be dragged before the war crimes court.
As the former head of the UN Peacekeeping Force, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire witnessed unspeakable horror in Rwanda, as extremist Hutus massacred more than 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus in the space of a few terrible days in 1994.
According to Canadians.ca, the ABC of Famous Canadians, "General Romeo Dallaire did everything he could pleading for 2,000 more peacekeepers to be added to his insufficiently equipped 3,000-man force.
"If they had answered Gen. Dallaire’s pleas, the UN could have stopped the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans. Instead, following the deaths of 10 Belgian Peacekeepers assigned to protect the President, his forces were cut down from 3.000 to a mere 500 men, who had to watch as one of the most horrible genoicides in human history took place before their very eyes."
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General was head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping when Gen. Dallaire’s pleas for help fell on deaf ears in 1994.
In the true life’s stranger than fiction category, Annan and the UN were recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in December of 2001.
In stranger-than-fiction category number two, Dallaire is currently on the "circumpolar", $1 million taxpayer-paid junket led by Canada’s spend-happy Governor General Adrienne Clarkson.
If it’s not frustrating enough for the Toronto-based Banro-Resource Corp. to be dragged into the political machinations of the UN war crimes court, it seems the corporation may have landed there by error.
"We were erroneously included in the (2001) report, and the report was totally discredited,"Banro-Resource Corp. executive vice-president Arnold Kondrat told Canadafreepress.com. Konrad added that "it is frustrating for the company to have to defend itself because of a lie and a mistake when we have done nothing wrong in the first place." report.
Aside from the hard core politicking of many endeavours undertaken by the UN, it is also the world’s largest bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are notorious for paper foul-ups, foul-ups that can take years to correct.
Foreign Minister Bill Graham got it right when he predicted these tribunals "may affect Canadians as time goes on."
It’s already started in Toronto with a company called Banro-Resource Corp.
You and your Canadian company could be next.
You read it first in Canadafreepress.com.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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