UN Condones DynCorp Sex Crimes and Sex Slavery
by DOMINIC HIPKINS
A senior United Nations official is demanding that her colleagues involved
in the sex trade in Bosnia should be stripped of their immunity and
prosecuted.
Madeleine Rees, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bosnia, has
broken ranks to demand that UN officials, international peacekeepers and
police who are involved in sex crimes be brought to justice in their home
countries.
Speaking exclusively to Scotland on Sunday, the British lawyer has also
launched an outspoken attack on her former boss. She accuses Jacques Paul
Klein, the former head of the UN Mission in Bosnia, of not taking UN
complicity in the country’s burgeoning sex trade seriously enough.
In recent years there has been a massive increase in the trafficking of women
in Bosnia, including girls as young as 12. The women are taken from their
homes in eastern Europe by organised criminal gangs and brought to Bosnia,
where they are forced into prostitution.
The trade in these so-called ‘sex slaves’ hardly existed until the mid-1990s.
It was fuelled by the arrival of tens of thousands of predominantly male UN
personnel in the wake of the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord by Bosnia,
Croatia and Yugoslavia in 1995.
Rees said: "Visiting brothels where women have been gang-raped into
submission, into slavery, is not part of the UN’s mandate.
"Without an enforceable code of conduct, immunity often means impunity. We
should look at ways of waiving that immunity.
"I would be very happy to see the possibility of prosecutions for rape or
assault in the UK. There is no question this should happen."
Rees, who has served in Bosnia since 1998, said she had encountered stiff
opposition from western officials in her attempts to tackle the trafficking of
women.
" They don’t want to know about it," she said.
"There is this whole ‘boys will be boys’ attitude about men visiting brothels.
There’s a culture inside the UN where you can’t criticise it. That goes all
the way to the top."
Referring to Klein, she added: "He doesn’t take this issue at all seriously."
Last year, Rees testified in support of Kathryn Bolkovac, a UN police officer
who was sacked for exposing the sexual abuse of women and children in Bosnia
by her colleagues.
Bolkovac’s former employer DynCorp, an American security firm which supplied
staff to the UN, was forced to pay £110,000 in compensation.
The chairman of the British employment tribunal which heard the case described
DynCorp as "callous, spiteful and vindictive".
Bolkovac had revealed UN peacekeepers went to nightclubs where young girls
were forced to dance naked and have sex with customers, and that UN personnel
and international aid workers were linked to prostitution rings in the
Balkans. At the time, Rees described it as "the biggest cover-up I have ever
seen", adding that she believed 30% of those visiting Bosnia’s brothels were
UN personnel, peacekeepers or aid workers.
DynCorp insists it has the highest ethical standards of business "and
encourages employees to speak openly".
However, Rees said the private defence contractors, whose British office is
based in Salisbury, should be banned from the country.
"DynCorp... should not be allowed anywhere near Bosnia," she said.
In January, a 500 strong European Union police force replaced the UN’s 1,800
member multinational International Police Task Force (IPTF).
Dedicated anti-trafficking teams were formed and assigned to raid nightclubs
across Bosnia suspected of operating forced prostitution rackets.
Rees said the counter-trafficking efforts had mostly been a failure. "They
were basically for show and completely amateurish," she said.
Referring to the EU police force, Rees added: "They are still very much on
probation. These men must understand that going into brothels is illegal in
Bosnia. The sex is not consensual if the woman is a 13-year-old girl
trafficked from Moldova."
Although there have been many cases of police officers being sent home in
disgrace for their involvement in the sex trade, the UN can only remove them
from service and is powerless to prosecute them. It is up to member countries
to take any further action.
Rees said: "People will say the UN is not practising what it preaches. It is
double standards, and it looks like western imperialism. Brothel raids find UN
police inside, and then no one is prosecuted. The UK is prosecuting no one.
"If you send people home, countries get wild. But if you don’t enforce the
rules, you can’t serve in the United Nations."
Human Rights Watch is equally downbeat in its assessment.
A spokesman for the organisation said: "Foreign nationals serving in Bosnia
enjoy almost complete immunity. It was assumed countries would prosecute and
discipline their citizens upon their return home from for crimes committed in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. This has rarely happened in practice."
Soldiers from S-FOR, or Stabilisation Force, Bosnia’s 18,000 strong Nato-led
peacekeeping force, were granted "immunity from personal arrest or detention"
by the November 1995 Dayton Treaty which authorised their deployment.
S-FOR troops are banned from attending brothels but Rees said the marketing
strategy of suspected new brothels opening near S-FOR bases makes it clear who
they are catering for.
"Outside the Russians’ base, there is a brothel called Odessa," she explained.
By the Americans’, its Texas or Philadelphia. There’s even an El Cid near the
Spanish base. While there are foreign troops in Bosnia, there will be always
demand for trafficked women."
Last night, Jan Oskar Solnes, spokesman for the European Union Police Mission
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said: "Its correct we have diplomatic immunity, but
I imagine any incident [of sexual misconduct] would be a personal rather than
professional matter.
"We have a zero tolerance approach to this issue and anyone involved will be
removed from the mission."
Kirsten Haupt, spokeswoman for the United Nations Liaison Office (UNLO) in
Bosnia, dismissed Rees’s claim that Jacques Paul Klein had not taken the
illegal sex trade seriously.
She said: " All cases have been thoroughly investigated. We have sent a number
of officers home. There is absolutely no toleration of a ‘boys will be boys’
attitude here."
Klein left Bosnia on February 1 and is no longer working for the UN. He is
understood to be on holiday in the United States, and could not be contacted
by Scotland on Sunday.
Yesterday, a spokesman for DynCorp said: "We do not make it a practice to
comment on opinions.
"However, we are familiar with previous public statements Ms Rees has made
about involuntary servitude and DynCorp continues to share her concerns for
women held against their will in Bosnia, just as we condemn all human rights
abuses anywhere in the world."
Bosnia sex trade shames UN
DOMINIC HIPKINS IN ZAGREB
THE SCOTSMAN:
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=160672003
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