On UNGA Day 1 Sierra Leone on Trust as Mission Has Rats and Bio Spies with Huawei

On UNGA Day 1 Sierra Leone on Trust as Mission Has Rats and Bio Spies with Huawei by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack UN GATE / SDNY, Sept 22 – For this 2026 UN General Assembly, the last of Antonio Guterres' desultory tenure, Inner City Press banned by Guterres applied on July 25 to re-enter and cover the speeches and section of next UNSG. No response. On September 20 UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric had Inner City Press removed even from a Zoom briefing, video here.    So Inner City Press will cover it from the gate.    Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio built his General Debate address almost entirely around the word "trust," telling the Hall that "trust grows when promises are honored, when the law protects everyone... Sierra Leone does not ask of the world what it does not demand of itself. We carry these same principles into our work at home."  Inner City Press has on and off over five years documented what Sierra Leone demands, or fails to demand, of its own institutions two miles from the UN Hall Bio spoke in Tuesday. Since 2021, the country's own UN Mission — its "Chancery," at 245 East 49th Street — has been the subject of an ongoing nuisance lawsuit brought by next-door neighbors, alleging rat infestation, mold, and fire hazards serious enough that a court ordered debris removed. The Mission's own lawyers refused, at points, to even photograph the interior, citing "national security." When Foley Hoag, the Mission's law firm (and selected First Amendment pro bono practitioner that doesn't even answer its mail) withdrew in 2024 for nonpayment and ten months of silence from its own client, the Mission's response was to send a vague letter asking for unspecified additional time to find new counsel — then simply not appear in court. At an August 2026 hearing, Sierra Leone's own attorney, asked directly by opposing counsel what the "modalities" were that the Mission kept citing as evidence of progress, answered: "I do not know."  UN circus: Now Sierra Leone's Bio speechifies about the rule of law - meanwhile, his UN Mission's building is collapsing and full of rats, according to Turtle Bay neighbors who sued the MIssion, which has cited diplomatic immunity- for rats https://t.co/eqD5tKR0HG https://t.co/zlJdCQWftA pic.twitter.com/YO0PSndnRy — Inner City Press (@innercitypress) September 22, 2026 A second, unrelated part of Tuesday's speech invites the same test. Bio told the Assembly that "developing nations must help shape the standards that will govern technologies affecting their people," posing climate finance as a question of "who benefits, who decides, and who pays." His own government's surveillance buildout suggests those standards, in Sierra Leone's own case, are largely being set by Beijing. On August 13, 2025, the Chinese Embassy in Freetown handed over 45 CCTV cameras, three Huawei monitors, and three Lenovo laptops to the Sierra Leone Police, explicitly to support the country's "Safe City" project — part of Bio's own named "Safe Salone" program, under his broader "Big Five Game Changers" agenda. Inspector General William Fayia Sellu confirmed more than 36 cameras were already operating in Freetown, including at a maternity hospital following a rise in child theft, with expansion planned to Bo, Kenema, Makeni, and Port Loko. A separate Chinese Embassy donation months earlier equipped the police force's own media and public relations department. None of the reporting on either donation — Sierra Leonean or Chinese Embassy sourced — describes independent oversight, data protection safeguards, or public debate over what the cameras collect, who can access the footage, or how long it is kept, the same category of question researchers have raised about comparable Huawei-linked Safe City programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana.  Bio's speech invoked institutions that "serve their people" and "trust" that "cannot be commanded by declaration." His own government's UN Mission, under-institutionalized and undocumented even by the lawyer defending it in court, and his own Safe City program, built on donated hardware from a government whose own surveillance practices Bio never mentioned, are two separate, unrelated case studies in exactly the gap between the speech and the record. Watch this site. Newly on the September 22 speakers list is Croatia, here on UN corruption, just before Guterres had Inner City Press roughed up and banned: UN Briber Patrick Ho In Appeal Reveals More Lobbying In UN For China Met Croatia President No Audit (July 13, 2019) — In appeal filings, convicted UN briber Patrick Ho's lobbying activities on China's behalf were shown to have included a meeting with Croatia's president, part of a broader pattern the underlying UN audit failed to capture. Watch this site. More on X for Subscribers here & Substack here *** Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron. Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com Mail: Box 130222, Chinatown Station, NY NY 10013 Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.  Copyright 2006-2026 Inner City Press, Inc. 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