Graca Machel – praag.org

Code Blue: End UN immunity

Former First Lady of South Africa and Mozambique has added her voice to a growing campaign to block staff in UN peacekeeping missions from hiding behind immunity when accused of crimes and sexual abuse.

Graça Machel has added her voice to a campaign called Code Blue that calls on the UN Secretary General to immediately waver diplomatic immunity for all mission staff when complaints of sexual exploitation arise.

The campaign launched in New York, is also calling on UN member states to appoint an independent Commission of Inquiry to examine every facet of sexual abuse in peacekeeping operations.

Machel produced a UN report in 1996 on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children and recommended that all gender-based violence during conflicts be prosecuted as a war crime.

19 years later, she believes little has changed within the UN system.

“These are women and children who have been brutalized by war and these are people who [are] eager … who represents the so called international community – the support, to say it’s ok now, we are going to start anew. We are going to have peace and pain is not going to be part of our life again and exactly the same people who infringe,” says Machel.

“How does it happen that the more we have sophisticated, international laws instruments, like conventions and protocols, we have also institutions which are expected to enforce those international laws, and people who within institutions are responsible to transform principles, to make them alive, it’s exactly those people, who turn against women and children,” she adds.

Code Blue has called for an amendment to the 1948 convention on immunity for UN civilian personnel to exclude cases of sexual abuse and exploitation.

Preliminary findings by the campaign have found that the vast majority of alleged abuse is by non-military personnel and a smaller percentage by the blue helmets themselves.

Co-director of organisation AIDS-Free World, that is spearheading the campaign, Paula Donovan says, “The problem with peacekeeping sexual exploitation and abuse and the application of immunity to UN staff and people who report ultimately to the SG is that it’s a gross misapplication of the 1946 convention. That convention was never intended to cover crimes, it certainly wasn’t intended to cover sexual crimes and it wasn’t intended to provide an obstacle to justice.”

The UN says it has a zero tolerance policy against sexual abuse but waiving immunity remains the prerogative of the Secretary General.

Donovan’s campaign is calling for an independent investigation.

“An independent, truly independent, commissioned by member states not by anyone in the Secretariat, must be commissioned to look at every single aspect of immunity, sexual exploitation, and abuse and the way it’s dealt with by the UN system,” she adds.

Co-director of Aids Free World, Stephen Lewis also blasted the UN’s handling of a leaked internal report that revealed French troops sexually abused children in the Central African Republic, even though the French were not under UN mandate.

“It’s now a year since those children were interviewed in the Central African Republic and they knew as early as May in 2014 that terrible things were being done. And frankly we believe that the UN should have jumped all over France from that day to this. Never giving them a moment when we as a United Nations weren’t asking what are you doing, have you charged people, have you taken them to trial, have you put them in jail, what are you doing about this abuse?” asks Lewis.

The UN has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for initially suspending the official who leaked the report to French authorities and then reinstating him.

France is now investigating the claims against its troops.

Mandela family feud over his money

Various newspaper reports suggest that Mandela’s heirs are fighting tooth and nail over the world-famous terrorist’s estate. One family friend even described the environment as “toxic”.

Apparently the Mandelas aim to kick Mandela’s widow, Graça Machel, out of the mansion in Houghton she had been sharing with her late husband. She was flatly told to leave the house once the famous Mandela had died.

Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, who is married to a Ghanian, is often not on speaking terms with Machel. According to reports, Makaziwe has also “verbally abused staff and repeatedly insisted she alone will determine how to divide the spoils of Mandela’s estate”.

Using her father’s name, Makaziwe Mandela has climbed the social ladder in South Africa’s black power politics. According to Wikipedia, her biography reads as follows:

Pumla Makaziwe “Maki” Mandela-Amuah (born 1954) is the daughter of Nelson Mandela and his first wife Evelyn Mase. She was named after her older sister, born in 1947, who died aged just nine months. Of the four children born to Nelson and Evelyn Mandela, Makaziwe is the only one still living. She is married to Dr. Isaac Amuah, who is of Ghanaian origin.

She received her secondary education at Waterford Kamhlaba UWC of Southern Africa before going to the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. In 1993, she earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.

She has held senior posts at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and now heads the Industrial Development Group (IDG), with interests in mining and petroleum.

As if the hostility of Makaziwe was not enough, Graça Machel is said to have suffered verbal abuse from Mandela’s grandson Ndaba Mandela who “he even tried to attack her physically but was restrained from doing so after the intervention of household staff”.

Machel is supposed to leave the luxurious Houghton home for a lesser abode in the Johannesburg suburb of Bryanston. Mandela family members suspect her of “having spent all Mandela’s money” although they have no proof.

Mandela’s will has not been read yet, but legal battles over the spoils are expected to ensue. The first salvo was fired by his daughters Zenani and Makaziwe even prior to his death when they tried to have the directors of two companies owned by the Mandela Trust removed. George Bizos, Tokyo Sexwale, Bally Chuene and Eastern Cape Judge President Themba Sangoni were sued in a failed attempt to remove them.

The Mandela daughters eventually gave up on their case and agreed to pay the costs of the proceedings, prompting the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright to issue the following statement on behalf of the directors:

“This ill-considered and misguided application had the effect of causing reputational harm not only to the respondents as directors and trustees but also to the trust and the image of the founder, Mr Nelson Mandela, himself.”

Did Mandela’s friend supply chemical weapons to Syrian rebels?

Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Nelson Mandela

by Terry Crawford-Browne

REPORTS from Syria by Jordanian journalists allege that it was Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia who distributed those chemical weapons to the Syrian rebels.( Here he is shown with that other unrepentant terrorist)

If true, it indicates the chemical attack in Damascus to have been a false-flag operation by the American war business.

This would be entirely in keeping with Prince Bandar’s history of organising the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra weapons exchanges, Libya in 2011, the suppression of the Shia uprising in Bahrain, Saudi support for the coup d’etat in Egypt and support for Syrian rebels.

Other reports confirm that Prince Bandar also went to see Russian President Vladimir Putin last month and offered to buy $15bn worth of Russian weapons provided Mr Putin abandoned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr Putin gave him short shrift.

Prince Bandar was not only the Saudi ambassador in Washington for 22 years and friends of Ronald Reagan and the Bush family, but he also negotiated the 1985 £43bn Al-Yamamah weapons deal with Margaret Thatcher, which Tony Blair renewed in 2007 with the Al-Salaam weapons deal.

When the British Serious Fraud Office investigated the bribes which BAE Systems paid him, Prince Bandar allegedly threatened blood in the streets of London.

Mr Blair squelched the investigation citing “national security.” The Guardian newspaper revealed a couple of months later how BAE with collusion of the British government had laundered bribes to Prince Bandar of over £1bn through Riggs Bank in Washington DC and other US banks.

Most importantly, Prince Bandar and Ms Thatcher negotiated the Al-Yamamah deal under the British Official Secrets Act, meaning that it cannot be investigated in Britain.

Saudi Arabia ships thousands of barrels per day of oil consigned to the Bank of England, which is then distributed to Shell and BP.

Over the years a surplus has developed, which is guesstimated to be worth over $150bn. Its purpose is a) to guarantee British and US support for the Saudi royal family against domestic insurrection and b) to fund covert destabilisation of resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa under the guise of the war on terror.

Having targeted Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and other countries over the years, Syria and Egypt are Prince Bandar’s current targets. When will SA be targeted by the American and British “war business” given our country’s mineral wealth?

Saudi Arabia made lavish donations to the African National Congress. Prince Bandar was also the only foreigner present at Nelson Mandela’s secret wedding to Graca Machel, and was a frequent visitor to SA when the arms deal was being negotiated.

Mandela’s grandson hopes for miracle

Days after the Presidency revealed that former President Nelson Mandela’s condition was sometimes unstable his grandson Mbuso Mandela has said that he still hopes that Madiba will be able to leave hospital.

Madiba has spent the past two and half months in the Pretoria Heart hospital, where he is being treated for a recurring lung infection.

Former President Nelson Mandela’s wife Graca Machel was supposed to speak at the Women of Excellence summit hosted by Madiba’s grandson Mbuso, but, just hours before the event was due to begin, she cancelled.

“She said it’s trying times at the moment so she won’t be able to attend because she has to be elsewhere,” said Mbuso.

Two days ago, the Presidency revealed that Mandela’s health did sometimes become unstable but stabilised after what has been referred to as “medical interventions”. It added that doctors were working hard to bring about a turnaround in Madiba’s condition.

“He’s 95 and there are not many people in this country and the rest of our continent that can actually reach that age and still be pretty compos mentis and still be able to look up, raise his hand and all that. So we must understand that he is old and we can’t really have too much expectations of him living forever, even though everyone would love that. So would I,” said Mbuso.

Mbuso Mandela says he understand the public’s need for updates on his grandfather’s health.

“People need to remember that, when he became president of this great country, and he actually did what he did, he then became everybody’s grandfather, everybody’s father. He became the people’s person. So, at the end of the day, we as a family must also understand that he is ours, but he is also our country’s.”

For now, it seems, the media frenzy that surrounded Mandela’s hospitalisation has become comparatively calm. – eNCA