Chapter 326 Blatant Robbery
UN headquarters, New York.
The days following the UNSC resolution regarding the dispute between Indonesia and Eden were filled with more meetings, both open and behind closed doors. The UN bylaws required them to announce any voting results and disclose their resolutions on their website within a certain amount of time, so everyone was busily arguing over how to divide the benefits from the Edenians. After all, in the eyes of the Big Five, Eden didn't deserve to have anything, especially considering its "poor and impoverished" status. And today was the day that the president of the UN Security Council, Ambassador Jennifer Walker of the United States, would send out a press release to the world and hold a press conference announcing the UN's decision.
She was quite pleased with herself, having won quite a few benefits for her country. Primarily, America would be taking over the oil extraction and the battery technology from the Edenian Navy, Russia would be taking Biogen and the asthma cure, the UK would take the shipbuilding technologies, France would receive the weapons technology, and China would be given the cellphone and laptop tech, including the manufacturing of their chips. Although all of the technologies would be shared by the five of them, each ambassador had agreed behind closed doors to collude and they would all be responsible for manufacturing the items and trading them between each member nation. Of course, that all hinged on the inspectors being able to pick a fault with Eden that would allow the UNSC to impose sanctions on them. But that wasn't a really hard task to accomplish; after all, finding fault with things, whether deserved or not, was incredibly easy if one were so inclined.
The reason that Ambassador Walker was pleased was because in addition to the technology acquisition, the US would be receiving all of the oil from Eden on their own.
She had done her duty and released the press release and the website was already displaying United Nations Security Council Resolution 2344, 'Concerning the Ongoing Dispute Between Indonesia and the Republic of Eden', so all that remained was the press conference where she would announce the resolution to the world. It was quite a feather in her cap and her staff had worked tirelessly to ensure that only "friendly" reporters would be in the audience and she knew all the questions that would be asked in advance.
The press conference went as planned. The reporters were friendly and only asked questions that Ambassador Walker had meticulously prepared to answer beforehand. The reporters had also gone into the conference with a general idea of what would be announced, as they'd already read the resolution on the UNSC's website, so the only thing that surprised them was Walker's announcement about the hindrance of the inspection team being cause for the imposition of sanctions on the fledgling country. Even the friendliest reporter was a little uncomfortable at that, because it was a blatant abuse of process to railroad a country that any reasonable person would have agreed was in the right.
The Indonesian ambassador had immediately followed with her own press conference, where he announced that Indonesia welcomed the UN inspectors with open arms, and even offered to help with the investigation.
The only country that had remained silent to that point was Eden, though Panoptes was already busy drumming up support for Eden through Pangea. Still, no one knew exactly what Eden's response would be, though the Edenian citizens had naturally chosen their side already. They argued that the industrialized nations, led by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, were trying to strong-arm them with false narratives because of the recent discovery of vast reserves of natural resources. Since Eden had continuously maintained that they were performing counterpiracy operations in Indonesian waters—including publicly releasing the satellite footage of the "innocent fishermen" they were accused of sinking—their accusations were quickly swaying the public to their side.
In response, the Big Five had found "experts" talking about how the video footage was doctored, and even complimented Eden on their expertise in filming movies. A certain Hollywood director even took to Pangea and joked about hiring them to work as editors on his next major blockbuster film.
The war of words on the internet continued off and on for hours until it settled down and everyone agreed that all Eden had to do to prove their innocence was let the inspectors in; after all, the UN was a respectable organization dedicated to maintaining world peace, so what was the big deal? Let them see what they wanted to see and they would clear Eden of any wrongdoing and life would go on.
Alexander's press secretary scheduled a press conference for the next day to announce the official Edenian response to the UN resolution. It would be broadcast on all channels in the country and streamed live through Eden's official Pangea account.
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The next day, the press conference took place as scheduled, and Alexander had no issues firing many shots across the UN's bow.
"If the allegations made any sense, we would naturally welcome the UN inspectors. But what we don't understand is why they want to investigate us and our weapons when the dispute is over whether or not our action of breaching Indonesia's territorial waters was valid under international maritime law as an act of counterpiracy. Indonesia is well known for having pirate-infested waters surrounding it, so why are we being singled out? And what does it have to do with our vessels?" he argued.
"We believe that the permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America—simply want to steal our weapons technology under the guise of 'inspecting' it. They have already sent over a list of demands that includes providing them with a copy of the schematics for our weapons and the blueprints for our ships, making it blatantly obvious that they want to take our technology. Technology which, I remind everyone watching, is responsible for our nation's self defense and is classified as such.
"Therefore, we hereby formally deny their request and issue our strongest protest against their blatant rigging of the sacred act of voting. The UN doesn't want to send inspectors, they want to rob us. They want to rob us of our safety, they want to rob us of our security, and they want to rob us of our technological advances simply because they cannot tolerate a small nation like ourselves having something that they themselves do not. Thank you for your time, and may god bless Eden. I will be taking no questions at this time."
Following Alexander's press conference, Ambassador Foster, the Edenian representative to the UN, sent an official letter denying access to the investigation team so long as they required access to sensitive military technology as part of their inspection process.
The response from the UN came at practically light speed, compared to the normal ponderous actions that required meeting after meeting before finally being implemented. It was only a week later that they announced the sanctions they would impose on Eden unless their inspectors had free and unfettered access to the ships in question. Together with the sanctions, the UNSC also imposed fines of 15 million USD per day until the UN inspection team was granted the access they required.
