Yesterday Russian sociologist Maxim Shugaley published the statement concerning UN and the Central African Republic, where he criticized UN’s policies. Mr. Shugaley is notable for his work in Lybia, where he was held one and a half years in prison because of a made up charge.
On March 12, a meeting was held at the United Nations General Assembly that focused on increasing MINUSCA’s staff by 20 percent in the Central African Republic. 14 countries voted in favour of this initiative, while only one country, Russia, abstained from voting.
Yet what is most surprising is that the Central African Republic itself has not been able to articulate its position regarding the security of its own territory. The reason for it is that the CAR had recently been deprived of its right to vote at the United Nations General Assembly due to a technical error. The technicality resulted in the payment of US $ 30,000 made on time by the CAR government being delayed. It is exactly this inability to know Bangui’s position on security that Russian diplomats mentioned as one of the reasons for their abstention.
This situation is entirely unacceptable, and even more so for a large-scale organization such as the United Nations. A country in a situation of war that needs the support of the international community must not see its interests ignored under an artificial pretext.
It seems as if this technical error did not happen by chance. Because not only the needs of the Central African Republic have been ignored, they have also been contradicted. The CAR authorities had repeatedly asked to be provided with helicopters to transport the wounded and to conduct operations against CPC rebels in hard-to-reach areas. Instead of meeting these completely logical needs, the UN Security Council has nevertheless decided to increase the contingent of its peace mission. This decision is completely pointless since more soldiers will not deal with the problem of shortage of supplies and quality military equipment in the Central African army because of the embargo imposed, by the way, by the Security Council itself.
However, come to think of it, this case is not at all that unusual: the United Nations and the West in general are notorious for ignoring the needs of the countries they are supposed to support and act exclusively in their own interests.
In the end of his statement Mr. Shugaley proposed to pay $30 000 US if UN sincerely thinks that depriving the CAR of its right to vote is justifiable. He added that he is eager to fix this unfortunate injustice.
One month ago, Shugaley published an open letter to his French colleague, Roland Marchal. M. Marchal also spent time in Iranian prison and was exchanged by the France.
In his letter, Shugaley disputes the need for the CAR government to engage in a dialogue with the militants. Now the FACA is strong enough to fight back thanks to the Russian instructors. Currently the only weakness of the FACA is its lack of weapons and this is the result of the UN embargo.
