Perhaps it should come as no surprise, since North Korea is, after all, a FULL member of the 193-nation organization, but U.N. offices around the world have lowered their flags to half-staff in commemoration of the funeral of North Korea's dictator [Dear] leader Kim Jong-il.
U.N. headquarters spokesman Eduardo del Buey said the gesture had been requested by Pyongyang’s U.N. mission and was normal for the funeral of any head of state.
"It’s a matter of protocol," said he.
So which was it, really?
A request or protocol?
And well, "normal" should surprise no one anymore.
Meanwhile, UN Watch, the Geneva-based advocacy group, made note that the U.N. human rights message was "at serious risk of being blurred today" because of the honoring of Kim, who died on Dec. 17.
[Blurred? How about totally irrelevant?]
"Today should be a time for the U.N. to show solidarity with the victims - the millions of North Koreans brutalized by Kim’s merciless policies of starvation, torture and oppression - and not with the perpetrator," the group’s executive director, Hillel Neuer, said in a statement.
Last Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly granted a request from North Korea and held a few moments of silence for Kim, although Western delegations boycotted it.
North Korea’s U.N. mission made a similar request to the 15-nation Security Council, but Western diplomats rejected it. “We didn’t think it would be appropriate,” one diplomat said.
Pyongyang is under Security Council sanctions due to Kim’s nuclear weapons program, which Western officials say ate up huge sums of money that could have been used to help feed North Korea’s starving population.
Historically, the U.N. General Assembly and its Security Council have often been at odds.
Of some ghastly irony (along with the aforementioned protocol) the newest council of the United Nations (under the General Assembly) is the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which replaced the UNCHR in March 2006.
May it forever rest in peace.
U.N. headquarters spokesman Eduardo del Buey said the gesture had been requested by Pyongyang’s U.N. mission and was normal for the funeral of any head of state.
"It’s a matter of protocol," said he.
So which was it, really?
A request or protocol?
And well, "normal" should surprise no one anymore.
Meanwhile, UN Watch, the Geneva-based advocacy group, made note that the U.N. human rights message was "at serious risk of being blurred today" because of the honoring of Kim, who died on Dec. 17.
[Blurred? How about totally irrelevant?]
"Today should be a time for the U.N. to show solidarity with the victims - the millions of North Koreans brutalized by Kim’s merciless policies of starvation, torture and oppression - and not with the perpetrator," the group’s executive director, Hillel Neuer, said in a statement.
Last Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly granted a request from North Korea and held a few moments of silence for Kim, although Western delegations boycotted it.
North Korea’s U.N. mission made a similar request to the 15-nation Security Council, but Western diplomats rejected it. “We didn’t think it would be appropriate,” one diplomat said.
Pyongyang is under Security Council sanctions due to Kim’s nuclear weapons program, which Western officials say ate up huge sums of money that could have been used to help feed North Korea’s starving population.
Historically, the U.N. General Assembly and its Security Council have often been at odds.
Of some ghastly irony (along with the aforementioned protocol) the newest council of the United Nations (under the General Assembly) is the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which replaced the UNCHR in March 2006.
May it forever rest in peace.
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