Photo UN/HP UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld at Elisabethville Airport (now Lubumbashi). The UN honored the memory of Dag Hammarskjöld and again called for the declassification of all documents about his death UN
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres paid tribute to Dag Hammarskjöld on Tuesday at a wreath-laying ceremony to mark the 65th anniversary of the death of the second head of the Organization. Guterres again called on all parties to declassify the remaining documents about the disaster that claimed the life of the Swedish diplomat.
“The values for which Hammarskjöld stood and the passion with which he defended them have remained an example and inspiration to me and countless UN colleagues over the years,” Guterres said.
Dag Hammarskjöld served as Secretary General from April 1953. He died in a plane crash in what is now Zambia along with 15 other UN staff and crew members on the night of September 17–18, 1961. He was heading to the city of Ndola to broker a ceasefire between the Congolese government and the rebels. The exact circumstances of the crash remain unclear. Investigations carried out after the incident led to the conclusion that the cause of the plane crash was either unfavorable weather or pilot error. However, in 2013, the International Commission of Jurists called on the UN to conduct a new investigation, citing the fact that newly discovered circumstances refute previous versions, and the cause of the car accident could have been shelling of the plane either from the ground or from the air. that he recently received another report from the former Chairman of the Supreme Court of Tanzania, Mohamed Chande Othman, who has been investigating the circumstances of the crash for several years. According to Guterres, the progress made is encouraging, and in the near future he will present to the General Assembly his new recommendations for further steps.
The UN head noted that although states have already handed over some materials to specialists, some of the documents are probably still classified. He again called on all parties to provide any records they have.
“We will not stop trying to establish what happened that night. The families of the victims, the United Nations – and the whole world – deserve answers,” the Secretary-General emphasized. According to him, in the last three years the number of such losses among UN colleagues has reached record levels. It is in such moments, he said, that what Hammarskjöld embodied can be a guide: integrity in the face of brute force and compassion. To build a world without fear, we ourselves must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be fair.”
“Let’s live without fear. Let be fair. And let us never give up working for peace,” concluded Guterres, inviting those present to observe a minute of silence in memory of Dag Hammarskjöld and all those who died with him.