When the Facts Hurt

The job was done, approved and paid for. Then the fuss began. Last year the Rockefeller Foundation gave the U.N. $100,000 for a study of the treatment of refugees in 17 European and Levantine countries. The job went "to an international team of experts headed by Jacques Vernant of France. The experts' 400-page report was published by the U.N.

At that point some of the victims spoke up. Syria resented the report's stating the fact that beggars abound in Syria; Egypt did not want it said that Egyptian naturalization papers are sometimes obtained by palm-greasing. Saudi Arabia proposed that the report be "impounded and pulped." Belgium and France added their cavils. Russia denounced one passage in the report as "subversive activity."

Trygve Lie's staff gave up. Retreating in all directions, they said that the report was just preliminary anyway, took the U.N. seal from it, and stopped its circulation.

That begged instead of answering a basic question. Objected London's Economist: "If an objective, independent piece of research is to be suppressed whenever it offends the feelings of any of the 60 governments in the U.N., how is the world organization to obtain the facts on which to base its decisions?"

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