By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, December 14 – Is the UN in decay? On December 15 on Wall Street Antonio Guterres, who has refused to hold any end of year press conference amid scandals including his Deputy's signing of 4,000 certificates to export endangered rosewood already shipped to China from Nigeria and Cameroon, will be “honored” at a Wall Street fundraiser charging $1200 per table. This less than a month after the second UN bribery indictment, this time of Patrick Ho and Cheikh Gadio, on which Guterres hasn't even arranged for any UN audit, after his DESA took $1 million from Ho's organization after the indictment. His host and enabler is the United Nations Correspondents Association, which not only took money from the last UN bribery convict, Ng Lap Seng, but also arranged for softball coverage of Deputy Amina J. Mohammed as her rosewood scandal grew. When Inner City Press went to cover, in the UN Press Briefing Room, an event of the UN Correspondents Association in January 2016 to see if the Ng Lap Seng funds were discussed, Stephane Dujarric who Guterres has kept on as spokesman evicted Inner City Press from the UN Briefing Room, then from its UN office and the UN as a whole. While Inner City Press reported on the UN from the park across First Avenue, UNCA's former president had a colloquy with Dujarric while it was fine. Another former UNCA president, Egypt state media Akhbar al Yom's Sanaa Youssef, was awarded Inner City Press' long time UN office but rarely comes in and has not asked a question in two years. Guterres' “Global Communicator” Alison Smale has been informed, and questioned, but has refused to respond. This is the UN's communication strategy: answer no question, evict critics, allow sycophants to sell the UN for money. This UNCA didn't even pretend to complain about the lack of an end of year press conference, much less about the increasing corruption. Birds of a feather. Here are their top-six no-competition elections results, with only 90 ballots, a new low... well here is 2017, to which there is only one change, the 2018 is apparently not yet "public" - Prez - Sherwin Bryce-Pease, South African Broadcasting (SABC); Valeria Robecco, ANSA News Agency; Melissa Kent, CBC/Radio; Carole Landry, Agence France Presse." And see here, saying Guterres met with Japanese media on December 8 prior to his trip. Guterres had no news, as he will not for Dutch state TV on December 20.Watch this site. Among the parts of the UN facing budget cuts for waste is not only the Department of Public Information, increasingly a propaganda arm which, as if as a sidelight, engages in censorship of the investigative Press, but also the UN's Regional Commissions, Budget Committee officials told Inner City Press on December 13. Inner City Press has previously reported on and asked about the presence of the Latin American Regional Commission (ECLAC) chief Alicia Barcena with Antonio Guterres when he spoke before the Committee. The UN then told Inner City Press Barcena was called on by Guterres for her expertise, but remains head of ECLAC. We'll have more on this. The Budget Committee officials told Inner City Press that if the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions does not finish "five big reports" by the end of this week, concluding the session on December 22 may be unlikely. At the noon briefing on December 14, Inner City Press asked the spokesman for the President of the General Assembly for the status of the ACABQ reports, and about the budget process. The question has been answered in writing: "The President of the General Assembly is aware of and concerned by the late arrival of documents to the Fifth Committee for its consideration. This has been a persistent problem, hampering the work of the Committee. The President has discussed this issue with the Chairs of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) and the Fifth Committee. He has also been kept abreast of the state of play in the Fifth Committee, including through periodic contact with the Fifth Committee’s Chair. ACABQ is a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly and is represented in the Fifth Committee by its Chair." We'll have more on this. New DPI chief Alison Smale's swearing in ceremony was closed to the Press; she has still not even responded to Inner City Press' three petitions for review of its eviction and restriction for reporting on corruption at the UN. Meanwhile, the UN Budget Committee head for the year, the Cameroonian Ambassador who joined DPI in its censorship after Inner City Press asked about abuses by his president Paul Biya, told Inner City Press it will all be done by December 22. We'll see. The UN delivered a threat to Inner City Press to “review” it accreditation on October 20 at 5 pm. 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.
