U.N. Watchdog in ‘Kafkaesque’ Limbo After Criticizing World Body
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
By Joseph Abrams
The United Nations detained an outspoken critic and booted her from its New York headquarters in what the woman, a human rights watchdog, is calling an effort to silence her opposition to the world body.
Anne Bayefsky claims that as retaliation for giving a two-minute impromptu speech defending Israel, her 25-year career of monitoring the U.N. is now in jeopardy — likely to be placed in the hands of a committee chaired by the genocidal regime in Sudan.
Bayefsky gets special access to U.N. meetings in her capacity as the director of a non-governmental organization, the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at New York’s Touro College.
But the longtime U.N. observer has found herself in what she calls a “Kafkaesque” gray zone, where the U.N. confiscated her credentials, then denied to reporters that her access had been blocked.
[snip]