“The three officers had received blue badges and slipped blue covers over their helmets. They were now U.N. peacekeepers, sent from Burundi to help protect victims of a brutal war in the Central African Republic.
But each of them had a past the United Nations was unaware of. When the deployments became public, Burundian activists were aghast.
One of the officers had run a military jail where beatings and torture occurred, according to civil-society groups and former prisoners. Another had committed human rights violations when anti-government demonstrations erupted in Burundi last year, U.N. officials would eventually learn. The third had served as the spokesman for the Burundian army, publicly defending an institution accused of abuses.
They set out for the Central African Republic in different U.N. deployments over the past year. In each case, U.N. officials soon determined that the allegations against the soldiers and their units were credible enough to send them home.”
Apparently, according to this article in the Washington Post, well-paying UN Peacekeeper jobs have become spoils that autocratic rulers hand out to their cronies for helping them stay in power. Bad system.
PWS
12/26/16