UN GATE, August 24 – Amid Inner City Press' detailed reporting on UN malfeasance it was targeted, roughed up and banned now for 417 days from entering the UN. Voice of America's UN correspondent pushed for the "review" of Inner City Press' accreditation; later Al Jazeera's UN bureau chief worked with UNSG Antonio Guterres and his spokesman Stephane Dujarric to get Inner City Press physically roughed up and ousted.
Now VOA's Margaret Besheer and Al Jazeera's James Bays appear in belated Freedom of Information Act response from VOA's parent, the "U.S. Agency for Global Media." After delaying for months, Inner City Press has now received a flash drive full of heavily redacted documents.
While still reviewing them, there is an e-mail from Al Jazeera's Bays to VOA's Besheer complaining that a Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs article about UN media coverage "mentions Inner City Press a para or two after mentioning us. I think I'll complain to the author. Poor research. [REDACTED]." Tweeted photo of e-mail here.
Then Bays and others at Al Jazeera, when Inner City Press pointed out that Guterres' spokesman Dujarric was given them private briefing in the UN Press Briefing Room, conspired to have UN Security Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins and six unnamed roughed up Inner City Press and then ban it without due process. Journalism is not a crime? We'll have more on this.
Back on 26 September 2018 for an event in the UN about human rights, with speeches by Secretary General Antonio Guterres and High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, Inner City Press was ordered out of the waiting line despite having a ticket. A UN Security official, a Captain known as Tiny, told Inner City Press it is under a ban from headquarters even though that has never been conveyed in writing, much less subject to any hearing or appeal. Videohere. What is the basis of the ban? While not conveyed in writing, because Guterres' UN is a corrupt censor, Guterres' Office of the Spokesperson has told the following lies in support of the ban. They claim falsely that Inner City Press "took a swing" at UN Security on July 3 - when in fact Lieutenant Roland E Dobbins and his unnamed colleague initiated and monopolized the use of force, video here. They say that a correspondent's media filed a written complaint. If this is Voice of America, that was years ago in 201s, and BBG told Congress it was a mistake. If it is Al Jazeera in June 2018, it is shameful. Finally they say that Inner City Press pursued a diplomatic down the sidewalk asking questions and that this somehow showed they had no security guards, putting them at risk to others. This seems to refer to the time the UN neglected to disclose Guterres was meeting in the public's $15 million mansion with the P5. For this reason, Inner City Press staked it out, entirely legally, from across Sutton Place. UK Ambassador Pierce emerged, found no car, and walked home. Inner City Press did not ask any question and is allowed to film - particularly noting Guterres total lack of transparency. These are all lies, pretexts for censorship. We will have more on this, having writtten earlier on September 26 to Michelle Bachelet, David A. Kaye and their staff members.
This comes as Inner City Press is told by sources close to Guterres that he was and is so angy at Inner City Press' anti-corruption questions and reporting that he is intent maintaining a life time ban, even as he blathers about human rights. His Deputy Amina J. Mohammad and chief of staff got along; troublingly, new Commissioner was written to but did nothing. Her staff handed out tickets in chaotic fashion on 46th Street, to such insiders as Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch which has done nothing about the lawless "permanent ban" list of the UN that HRW loves so much. But for new Commissioner Bachelet to be so quickly corrupted or defanged? We'll have more on this. On September 24 for a Financial Sector Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, Inner City Press was on September 24 singled out and banned, despite having its RSVP accepted by the Mission of Liechtstein and even UN University. Video here. In the early afternoon of September 25, Inner City Press sent this to Antonio Guterres, and also High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet: "Secretary General Guterres: This follows up on a telephone call I made to your chief of staff's (and Deputy SG's) offices yesterday afternoon when I was blocked from attending an event in the Trusteeship Council Chamber about launching an Initiative for a Financial Sector Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.
I am writing now because I am intent on attending, and have a right to attend other events this week, for example the human rights event with HCHR Bachelet on Wednesday, 26 September, at 1115 am in Conference Room 2, see below. I have RSVP-ed, and cc this message to High Commissioner Bachelet and her two assistants.
It is unacceptable for the UN to have an UNdisclosed and UNexplained "current and active banned" list with no due process and no appeal. It is akin to no-fly lists with no appeals process. This must be resolved, in particular for the September 26 UN "human rights" event.
I was invited to the modern slavery event -- I investigate and report on the misdeeds of banks, and did so before I came to the UN to cover it in 2005 -- and my RSVP was accepted. I picked up my ticket at 2:45 pm on 46th Street, showed it to the officers on Second and First Avenues and stood in line at the Visitors Entrance with others going to the event.
They all were admitted but I was singled up and told to wait by the side. After a time a Department of Safety and Security official told me I am subject to a “current and active barred notice.”
Since all I have received from the UN, since being assaulted by DSS Lieutenant Dobbins and another on 3 July 2018 as I staked out the Fifth (Budget) Committee meetings having been invited there by several member states' diplomats in those final meetings, is an August 17 letter stating that my accreditation as a correspondent is withdrawn, I asked who is behind this target “current and active barred notice.”
The officer would not tell me. I asked if it is USG Drennan of DSS, whom I wrote to on 5 August 2018 (“REPORT OF PROHIBITED CONDUCT (HARASSMENT, ABUSE OF AUTHORITY) AND ‘FORMAL COMPLAINT’ SUBMITTED TO UN UNDER SECRETARY GENERAL FOR SAFETY AND SECURITY, MR PETER DRENNAN, PURSUANT TO ST/SGB/2008/5.” Receipt of that was confirmed to me on 8 August 2018 by Elena Rice-Howell, Special Assistant to the Under-Secretary-General of DSS.
But nothing has been done by DSS, including about my formal complaint of assault against Lt Dobbins and his colleagues who refused to give their names. This whole sordid descent into censorship by the current UN was profiled, along with SEA, Haiti cholera, conflicts of interest and travel cost waste, including the issue of yours, and whether and where you disclosed your son's business connections, in the New York Post two days ago, here.
I was told yesterday I should contact DPI - whose USG Alison Smale never spoke to me before withdrawing my accreditation and has not answer any of my ten e-mail nor a petition with more than 5000 signatures urging her to restore my access, my office S-303 and stop targeting me as I report, sometimes critically, on the UN.
So I called your chief of staff's (and Deputy SG's) offices, just as the event I had RSVP-ed to began, and I am outraged by the lack of response. I have written to each of them this morning, still no response, even as I picked up another RSVP ticket. This should be responded to immediately. Matthew Russell Lee, Esq., Inner City Press."
On September 24 the slavery bank event ran from 3:30 to 5 pm in the UN's Trusteeship Chamber. Inner City Prss arrived 45 minutes early to the NYPD security checkpoint at 46th Street and Second Avenue. Its ticket was accepted by NYPD, it prepared to audio record the event -- but at the UN Visitors Entrance a large UN Security Officer or Capitan nicknamed Tiny said No, it was his understanding that Inner City Press is entirely banned from the UN, not only as a journalist. "You have a current active barred notice against you," he said. Audio here.
Inner City Press asked him if this came from the boss of the Department Safety and Security Peter Drennan, who has not responded to Inner City Press formal complaint to him that it was assaulted by UN DSS Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins on July 3. He said it was not from chief Michael “Mick” Brown. Who then? He refused to say. “You have to call DPI,” he said, referring to the Department of Public Information whose chief Alison Smale has not answered a single on of Inner City Press' more than 10 e-mails.
Inner City Press called the office of Secretary General Antonio Guterres' chief of staff Maria Luiz Viotti and informed them; they said that she would be told. Hours later, nothing. Inner City Press called the office of the Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed, and was told that the head of office, seemingly Nelson Muffuh, could or would do nothing. Then Inner City Press called the office of Alison Smale, where a person named Charlotte said she would look into and call back. Hours later, nothing. Audio of Inner City Press' side of calls, here.
Inner City Press was never given a hearing by Smale before her August 17 letter with withdrew Inner City Press media accreditation. Nothing in it said anything about a ban from entering the UN as a person, a tourist, or in another other way. But this is what happened, without any recourse. Pure Kafka-esque censorship, by a former New York Times Berlin bureau chief to hinder coverage of the corruption of the former Portuguese prime minster Antonio Guterres, see September 23 New York Post here. What next? Watch this site.
