It's Time the UN Stopped Congratulating Kim Jong Un
By
Claudia Rosett
May 7, 2017
Protocol has its uses, not
least at the United Nations. But when it comes to lavishing on murderous
tyrants the same pro forma felicitations accorded to the elected
leaders of free nations, it's time for Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres to clean up the act of the UN Protocol and Liaison Service --
which reports to him.
What's
the problem? There are many problems, actually, and they stem from the
UN's morally incontinent practice of doling out to all member states --
whether totalitarian or democratic; North Korea or Costa Rica -- the
same perquisites, including a lot of diplomatic swag for the most
monstrous dictators on the planet.
Lest
that sound too abstract, let's turn to one of the latest outrages. This
cameo starts with a UN communique to war-wracked Syria, where last
month the state news agency, SANA, reported that President Bashar
al-Assad had just received "a cable of congratulations from United
Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the occasion of Syria's
independence day." According to the SANA dispatch, (boldface mine) Guterres in this cable "expressed his warmest congratulations to the Syrian people and government on this occasion."
For anyone even remotely familiar with the doings of Assad and the
condition of Syria, that message sounds more than a tad out of touch.
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