By Latheef Farook –

Justice collapsed, evil triumphed and UN lost its soul in its infancy

Seventy years ago on November 29 1947, Western imperialist powers led by US President Truman, blackmailed United Nations and passed a resolution, in complete violation of the very UN charter, to partition Palestine to offer part of it to migrant Jews to set up a Jewish state.    

It was one of the darkest days in human history when international justice, moral principles and all cherished human values collapsed. As a result of this resolution Palestinians, the owners of the land, were forced into refugee camps where they still languish in appalling condition.

From the very inception, the big powers manipulated UN Security Council. For example US blackmailed member countries such as Philippines, Haiti, Liberia, China, Ethiopia and Greece who opposed the resolution to support.   

In the closing days of the Second World War, five nations –United

States, Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom and China – met in Washington between August and October 1944, to work out proposals for a charter to establish the United Nations (UN) in place of the League of Nations.

In the following year, representatives of fifty governments met in San Francisco from 25 April to 26 June 1945 for formulating the United Nations Charter based on the proposals worked by the five big powers. The Charter was finally adopted and signed on 26 June 1945 by the participants.

In drafting the Charter and establishing the UN, the big powers structured the organisation to ensure they retain their power to continue to shape the destiny of the world to suit their political and economic agendas.   

Although membership had been open to all, new members were admitted to the UN General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council only on condition if they accept, and were willing to carry out the decisions of the Security Council. 

Seven decades later today, the UN, which has 191 members, has failed the world.

After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the UN has become a mere tool under the sole super power the United States, which exploits the UN to implement its evil designs on the helpless, especially Muslim countries.

Highlighting the current plight of the UN, former Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamed in his final address to the General Assembly said in 2004, that the “United Nations, in which we had pinned so much hope, is collapsing on its clay feet, helpless to protect the weak and the poor”.

The UN’s credibility crisis continues to date. Hundreds of resolutions have been passed on many international issues. Those directed especially at Muslim countries were strictly implemented as divine laws while others were ignored.

For example in June 1967 Israel invaded neighbouring countries, with the backing of the west, and captured West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights. The United Nations resolutions 242 and 338 demanded Israeli withdrawal from captured territories. Instead Israel continue to build Jewish settlements and annex Palestinian lands including East Jerusalem.

In the 1960s and 70s, with more and more newly independent countries joining the UN, the General Assembly became the most important forum for the newly emerging countries to highlight their cause and seek means to redress them. In the 1980s, angered by the Third World domination of the General Assembly, the US ignored the UN, delayed her annual financial contributions and even withdrew from UNESCO.

In 1990 came the collapse of the former Soviet Union changing overnight the entire international political scene throwing Third World countries aligned with Soviet Union into disarray. 

It was in this critical environment for the developing countries Iraq, encouraged by United States, invaded Kuwait in August 1990, and triggered the Gulf crisis. Between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and the beginning of the US attack on Iraq on January 17 1991, the UN Security Council passed twelve resolutions in quick succession. Thus it was UN sanctioned war, destruction   and the genocide of its people.

Sanctions

United Nations sanctions on countries like Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, to cite few, turned out to be genocide of people for the follies of their regimes, often supported by US. The UN sanctions on Iraq in 1991 killed more than 500,000 children while hundreds of thousands remain deformed and crippled.

UN and the Massacre of Bosnian Muslims

The UN resolutions were responsible for the massacre of more than 200,000 Muslims in Bosnia. It was under the watchful eyes of UN and the champions of human rights in Europe and United States that Bosnian Serbs slaughtered more than 300,000 Muslim men, women, and children and displaced at least two million more that were driven out from their homes to take refuge in the nearby jungle.

The UN gave a free hand to the well-armed Serbian thugs to commit mass murder, torture, rape, destruction and eviction from their homes under what was described as “ethnic cleansing”. The UN lost its credibility when it imposed an arms embargo and deprived the Bosnian Muslims to defend themselves.

While Bosnian Serbs were busy with their killing spree for three long years UN did nothing to stop the genocide and protect the Muslims. 

Almost a week long Srebrenica massacre of approximately 10,000 Muslim men and boys and the torture, rape, and killing of many women and children, from July 12 through July 18, in and near the UN declared “safe area” remains one of the most horrifying events in recent European history.

Later admitting UN complicity UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reiterated that Srebrenica massacre would haunt the world body forever. The 400 Dutch troops who were guarding Srebrenica’s Muslim victims looked the other way, while the UN rejected appeals for air strikes by NATO to halt their advance.

“The victims had put their trust in international protection. But we, the international community, let them down”, said a message from former European Union foreign policy Chief Javier Solana. “This was a colossal, collective and shameful failure”.

Anglo-American war on Iraq and UN

Once again, exploiting the controversial September 11 events, suspected to have triggered by US and Israel, George Bush Junior turned to the UN to legitimize his evil designs first on Afghanistan, and then to invade Iraq. Even in the case of these aggressions, the US managed to get the relevant UN resolutions passed simply by blackmailing smaller nations, while most Arab regimes struck under-the-table deals with the US and turned a blind eye leaving their Afghan and Iraqi brothers to face the missiles and bombs. 

Mahathir Mohamed challenged the credibility of the UN, condemned the selective use of the veto power in the Security Council, and warned the world body against the resurgence of imperialism and “puppet regimes”.

Striking at the very heart of the UN problem, Mahathir called for the resignation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan for failing to assert himself to prevent the US invasion of Iraq. The UN’s organs had been “cut out, dissected and reshaped so they may perform the way the puppet masters want”, said Mahathir, who pointed out that “the uni-polar world dominated by a democratic nation is leading the world to economic chaos, political anarchy, uncertainty and fear”.

United Nations legalised Bush-Blair invasion and turned Iraq and into a wasteland helping Western oil companies loot its oil wealth like vultures preying on the dead. The entire country is in ruins. Its health, education, water, electricity and others services were crippled. Around 1.4 million innocent Iraqis were killed, more than two million live in refugee camps in neighbouring countries and more than four million became refugees in their own country. Rape of innocent Iraqi women and torture of men, women and the aged alike remain common knowledge. 

Bush bombed, incinerated and wiped out the city of Fallujah during the Holy Month of Ramadan and obliterated its people to bring them and their city of around 300,000 to its knees. 

The savagery unleashed was unprecedented. American forces dropped even cluster bombs and used phosphorous weapons that caused severe burns in the military’s most intense urban fighting since the days of Vietnam. Within ten days Fallujah has been laid waste, a hell on earth of shattered bodies and destroyed buildings while the city entered history as the place where US imperialism carried out a crime of immense proportions. The head of Turkey’s Parliamentary Human Rights Committee said this genocide surpassed those of Pharaoh, Hitler and Mussolini. 

This crime was committed by George Bush and Tony Blair in a war legalised by the United Nations.

What has the UN done to stop the barbarity in Afghanistan? This barbarity continues to date.

On top of this the UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone on the Israeli military strikes in Gaza, from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, accused Israel of committing war crimes. During the Israeli military attacks houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed. More than 1,400 people were killed during the military operation. 

However no punishment and no sanctions?

Now Myanmar’s government and government backed Buddhist mobs were slaughtering Rohingya Muslims, raping and gang raping Rohingya Muslim women and burning Muslims alive including children and the UN so far did nothing to stop the barbarity. 

This is the plight of the UN which was established to save humanity from war mongers?