By Matthew Russell Lee
UNdisclosed Location, March 20 -- Nine months after scribes in the UN Correspondents Association went afterInner City Press for its reporting on Sri Lanka, subjecting it to death threats from extremist supporters of the Rajapaksa government, now several of them have belatedly taken an interest in the war crimes they did not cover in 2009.
Close observers call it guilt or more precisely, C.Y.A -- Cover Your Arse.
Al Jazeera's Marcelle Hopkins, for example, was shown pro government media stories in June 2012 saying that the UNCA proceeding she pushed forward could put Inner City Press out of the UN and in jail -- an extremist called to wish jail rape on Inner City Press.
Al Jazeera's Hopkins response was to say she was “offended” that Inner City Press would blame the UNCA proceeding -- cited in the Sri Lanka media accounts -- for the threats. Audio here.
It was a bogus response then, and is a bogus response now. Ironically, Hopkins had purported to offer praise for Inner City Press' reporting on Sri Lanka - but then would obviously have been happy to see it stop.th
On March 18, Hopkins walked right on by as the UN raided Inner City Press' office and conducted a non-consensual search of its papers.
But, hey, Hopkins is tweeting about the Sri Lanka resolution at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
So is Denis Fitzgerald of the Saudi Press agency, in 2012 just a judge of Inner City Press, now as if as a reward an UNCA Executive Committee member. Despite being told of the dangers of raising spurious claims of funding by the Tamil Tigers, Fitzgerald did just that in 2012, demanding for example, "who funds you?" Audio here.
Now, he too is tweeting about Sri Lanka, and claiming to have no role in what the UNCA Executive Committee he sits on does. UNCA President Pamela Falk on March 18 took photographs of the UN's raid on Inner City Press' office. Any explanation?
Tim Witcher, now as then an UNCA Executive Committee member, does not tweet about Sri Lanka. He hardly tweets at all - the last, in early March, was to try to promote the equally spoonfed story of Michelle Nichols of Reuters based on a briefing by Witcher's main source Herve Ladsous, answering a question Inner City Press had put to Ladsous and Ban Ki-moon.
After UNCA's Witcher cut into Inner City Press' conversation with another journalist on March 8 to hiss “lies and distortion” and Inner City Press replied, “lapdog,” Witcher and Reuters' correspondent filed intentionally false complaints with UN Security, to provide fodder to the UN to throw Inner City Press out. This is UNCA.
On March 20 Witcher re-emerged, again with a French focus: Central African Republic and the need to blame Assad for chemical weapons use in Syria, even if by rebels. This is UNCA: cynical, blind and unresponsive. Watch this site.
