By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 20 – The UN delivered a threat to Inner City Press to “review” its accreditation on Friday afternoon at 5 pm. The complainant was Maher Nasser, passed over twice for the top job at the UN Department of Public Information and also, we've now learned, abruptly removed from the UN International School Board of Trustees. After publication of the letter and audio, sources called in with accounts of Nasser's role in DPI's "Wonder Woman" fiasco, and controversies in his tenures on the UNIS board. "He is everything that's wrong with the UN," one said. "Guterres passed him over for USG-DPI, but now Nasser is petulantly attacking the Press as it reports on Guterres and Cameroon." That is the situation, and it is impossible to even seek Nasser's side of the story. After getting Tal Mekel to deliver his threat letter, Nasser blocked Inner City Press on Twitter. This is today's UN. Mekel, the UN official who signed the letter, when Inner City Press went to ask about the undefined violation of live-streaming Periscope video at a photo op by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, had already left, minutes after sending the threat. This comes two days after Inner City Press asked Guterres about the UN inaction on threatened genocide in Cameroon, and the UN claimed Guterres hadn't heard the 15-second long question.
It also comes after Alison Smale the head of the Department of Public Information which would “review” Inner City Press' accreditation has ignored three separatepetitions from Inner City Press in the six weeks she has been in the job, urging her to remove restrictions on Inner City Press' reporting which hinder its coverage of the UN's performance in such crises as Yemen, Kenya,Myanmar, and the Central African Republic where Guterres travels next week, with Smale's DPI saying its coverage of the trip will be a test of its public relations ability. But the UN official who triggered the complaint is Maher Nasser, who filled in for Smale before she arrived.
UN's Letter Threatening to Review Inner City Press' Accreditation for Audio Report While Staking Out on Cam... by Matthew Russell Lee on Scribd
His complaint is that audio of what he said to Inner City Press as it staked out the elevators in the UN lobby openly recording, as it has for example with Cameroon's Ambassador Tommo Monthe, here, was similarly published.
A UN “Public Information” official is complaining about an article, and abusing his position to threaten to review Inner City Press' accreditation. The UN has previously been called out for targeting Inner City Press, and for having no rules or due process. But the UN is entirely UNaccountable, impunity on censorship as, bigger picture, on the cholera it brought to Haiti. And, it seems, Antonio Guterres has not reformed or reversed anything. This threat is from an official involved in the last round of retaliation who told Inner City Press on Twitter to be less "negative" about the UN - amid inaction on the mass killing in Cameroon - and who allowed pro-UN hecking of Inner City Press' questions about the cholera the UN brought to Haiti and the Ng Lap Seng /John Ashe UN bribery scandal which resulted in six guilty verdicts. We'll have more on this.
