Yves Cabannes and the Evolution of a Made Up Outrage...

Prof Yves Cabannes, the current Convenor of the United Nations Advisory Group on Forced Evictions (and professor of Urban Development at University College London) is unhappy with the current evictions at Dale Farm, and has spoken out about it. Reading the daily mail, particularly the columns by Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips, one would be forgiven for thinking what he said was incendiary, that he launched a vicious attack against the British Government, Britain in general, equated Britain with Darfur, Zimbabwe and a whole host of other places, condemning great Britain under international law, shocking stuff I think you’ll agree. So did Prof. Cabannes actually say all that? Well have a look and decide for yourselves.

Short Statement: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14918520

Longer (and more detailed) Interview: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9590000/9590626.stm 

Right, so while, in the radio interview, he does (briefly) mention international law, stating three areas (ratified by Britain) which the evictions violate, a vast majority of his criticism is based on the British laws,  and his criticisms were not directed at the British government or indeed at Britain  in general but rather at a specific local authority, who he primarily claimed were violating, British land laws (Something I think it is fair, given his various positions, to assume he knows a fair bit about)...Hardly the UN using obscure forms of international law to bully Britain as a whole. 

So then that leads to the next question, where did the whole Darfur/Zimbabwe/random third world country thing come in to the picture from? Well here is where the leaps of logic go from striking into the territory of the truly bizarre. Apparently because forced evictions take place in those countries, and the convenor of the UN Advisory Group on Forced Evictions saw fit to comment on an issue in the UK, it somehow leads to the conclusion that the situations are somehow equal in the advisory groups eyes which strikes me as somewhat akin to saying “Well people who steal cans of soft drinks are put on trial, so are people who perpetrate multi-million pound heists, therefore the two crimes are of equal seriousness in the eyes of the law”, which is of course ridiculous. In fact in the radio interview, he specifically goes on to state that the forced evictions were very small in comparison to actions being taken in other parts of the word.

So to sum up, someone from the UN said something relatively innocuous, perhaps slightly controversial at a stretch, and from that commentators, took the statement completely out of context to justify their increasingly mad paranoia against the UN.

Oh for the record, I am personally not opposed to the evictions at Dale Farm, I believe property law exists for a reason and as such should be respected, but using this situation as a platform to attack the UN is just the height of ridiculousness.