The United Nations General Assembly's 64th session will be held this September. It seems that the Western media do not care what is to be discussed but, instead, choose only to direct their fire at Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. They heap blame and slanders on him and criticize his poor English speaking ability. Some of the media also blame him for his poor organizational management. Why do the Western media keep lashing out at him?
Before the former Secretary General Kofi Annan stepped down, the Western media claimed that Asia had no good choice for the position of UN general secretary and proposed to pick someone from a small Western country to fill the post. But their plan failed and the West had to accept Ban Ki-Moon. Then the Western media did a u-turn and greatly praised him saying that "in secondary school, Ban became a star pupil, particularly in his studies of English." And he also spoke good French. Now, suddenly it seems he speaks only broken English!
The reason for this sudden change of attitude in Western media coverage is quite clear and simple. Ban has been doing his job according to the UN Charter since he became Secretary General and has won applause from developing countries while irritating the West. He criticized it for not doing enough in regard to reducing carbon emissions and this might cause further problems after the Kyoto Protocol expires. Ban advocates holding political talks and sending peacekeeping forces to tackle the Darfur crisis. But since the West did not support his initiative, the plan of sending 26,000 peacekeeping forces to Darfur has not been realized.
Since the financial crisis spread from the US to the whole world, Ban said on many occasions that it was caused by a lack of financial supervision in Western countries. And the UN Committee of Experts (UNCOE) established by Ban also blamed the US for its existing economic problems. In March, Ban criticized the US as a "deadbeat donor", for not having paid its billion dollars in UN dues and this kind of behavior in turn generated objections from the US Congress that he had "insulted the US".
Recently Ban said that he was willing to hold negotiations with the top Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, which was strongly opposed by Western countries and displeased many Western political leaders. That is why he is now under such fierce fire.
Actually the Western media's criticism of Ban has another intention: to hamper him from seeking a second term.
One can criticize Ban's work but not subject him to vicious personal attacks.
The author, Wu Miaofa, is a senior researcher with the China Institute of the International Studies and former Counselor of the Chinese Permanent Mission to the UN and also China's alternate representative to the UN Security Council.
(China.org.cn translated by Zhang Ming'ai, August 10, 2009)
