Amid UN Rape Scandals, UN & US Samantha Power Vow Change, But Darfur Cover Up & Ladsous UNanswered

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 13 -- With the UN shown to have covered-up rapes not only in the Central African Republic, by its own UN peacekeepers and the French Sangaris force, but also in Tabit in Darfurand Minova in the Democratic Republic of the Congo before that, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met beyind closed doors with the 15 members of the Security Council on August 13.

   Conspicuously absent from the meeting, and from the UN during this week of scandal for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, was the head of DPKO, Herve Ladsous. He is, in the French way, on vacation; Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric told Inner City Press thatLadsous had not even spoken with Ban about the scandal.

   When Ban emerged from the meeting, he declined press questions, pointing at Dujarric who was behind him in the entourage. But Dujarric left unanswered basic requests for information, such as how many sexual abuse complaints have been filed against UN missions in DRC, Darfur and Haiti.

  The goal, it seems, was to put the scandal into the past by firing a single individual, Babacar Gaye, the head of the mission in CAR. (His replacement, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, was already in the August 13 meeting.)

   Last month's Security Council president told the press that this months president, Joy Ugwu of Nigeria, would be coming to the UNTV stakeout to provide a summary of the meeting.  Then it was said that Ogwu would stakeout along with the US Ambassador, Samantha Power.  Then finally, only Samantha Power spoke. Video here.

  Power's new spokesperson pointedly allowed only three questions, from Reuters (who she'd called on for Power's most recent stakeout on August 7, here), Associated Press (which also asked about ISIS and an upcoming Arria formula meeting about LGTBI) and finally... the Wall Street Journal.

   Inner City Press asked, as it would have asked Joy Ogwu, if making troop contributing countries disclose whether they prosecute suspects and the results was discussed. Power's spokesperson said pointedly, I've already called on [Reuters.] The rest of the press corps was there, apparently, just as extras to make it look free-wheeling.

   And so after entirely predictable hand-picked questions, Inner City Press asked Power, on the mass rapes in Tabit in Darfur, has anything been done? The question was perfectly audible. But there was no answer.

  Here's why it's important: many on the Security Council including the US spoke a lot about UN Peacekeeping's cover-up of rapes in Tabit in Darfur last year. But nothing has been done: no one disciplined, much less fired. If there was no follow through on that, how will there be on this?

  Relatedly, while much is made of trying to get European countries to contribute more troops to UN Peacekeeping, the French government did nothing about allegations its soldiers raped children in CAR, which that government received from the UN's Ander Kompass in July 2014. So how would their inclusion automatically make things better?

  These are questions that should be answered, or at least allowed. These are questions that will be pursued. Watch this site.
   

From Cairo, As WSJ Reports Ban Ki-moon's Pre-Released Remarks, UN Censorship, Murky on Who Shelled UNRWA School in Beit Hanoun

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 24, more here -- After UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew to eight countries in the Middle East in six days, on a private jet funded by Qatar, and other aircraft from Saudi and perhaps other donors, he prepared to speak in Cairo on July 24.

  At 7:22 AM Eastern Time in the US, Ban's Office of the Spokesperson emailed out Ban's remarks.  Seven minutes later at 7:29 AM they e-mailed again: "PLEASE RETRACT - Secretary-General's remarks to press in Cairo have not been delivered."

  While not required, Inner City Press decided to hold off reporting any of this, expecting Ban to speak with US Secretary of State John Kerry soon thereafter.

    Two hours later, the Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon published a story quoting what Ban was "expected to say" --

"'On this, the last Friday of Ramadan, I call for an immediate, unconditional humanitarian pause in the fighting in Gaza and Israel,' Mr. Ban is expected to say Friday, according to a draft of his prepared comments. 'We can build on this initiative by supporting international efforts to put in place the elements of a longer-term cease-fire plan.' A spokesperson for Mr. Ban said the transcript was mistakenly released by the U.N. on Friday.”

   While still awaiting Ban's expected -- changed? -- remarks with John Kerry (a reporter on the scene says the UN flag has been placed and replaced at the site of the press availability), it's worth asking, how does the UN get "its" press corp to sit on Ban's remarks released, with no embargo, and then "retracted"?

   Inner City Press has reported on, and the Free UN Coalition for Access seek to counteract, this dynamic, for example here when the UN's Correspondents Assocation - known for more than one reason as the UN's Censorship Alliance -- provided Ban with a soccer photo op. 

  Significantly in these pre-released remarks, Ban once again cites the bombing of the UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun without saying anything about who did it - despite for example the widely reported series of IDF tweets. So again: why was Ban's pre-released statement sat on?

   The Free UN Coalition for Access also asks: how can it be that the UN does not disclose when Secretary General Ban Ki-moon accepts free travel on a private jet, and on July 24 would not tell Inner City Press how and on whose plane Ban flew to Iraq? Video here.

 (We note that, along with a Newsweek piece that credited Inner City Press' exclusive, Solomon is one of two reporters trailing Kerry who've asked / tweeted about Ban using the Qatar funded private jet.)

   This follows the UN's only belated acknowledgement, after Inner City Press asked several times, that Ban began his Gaza-related tour by flying on a Qatar-funded jet to Qatar, then Cairo.

 Bigger picture, does the UN, while claiming to abide by its own stated ethics rules, simply not have time for them and waive them?  When Inner City Press asked on July 23, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said, if you are here as a lawyer, "You're not entitled to be at the noon briefing."Video here from Minute 4:26.

 Haq has denied that there is any conflict of interest in accepting the Qatar-funded travel, but has still not said when or how an opinion was sought from the UN's Ethics Office. Video here and embedded below. Inner City Press on July 23 asked, in writing:

"This is a request for the the entire audio file of the Secretary General's press availability in Jerusalem at which the US State Department transcribed the question, “Mr. Secretary-General, do you think it’s appropriate for Qatar to be paying for your flight here” and this answer:

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN: No – ladies and gentlemen, this is the 15th day since the crisis began. We do not have much time to weigh the rules.

See, http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/07/229662.htm
[since changed on State Department website from this archived version, here]

"This is also a request to be informed if, when and how the UN Ethics Office was asked about the Secretary General accepting the gift of travel on the Qatar-funded, and the UN's estimate of the value of the gift; a statement of all rules applicable to receipt of this gift, and how much has been spent on Secretary General travel in the past two years. On deadline."

  Here was the UN's "response," with neither the audio file, nor the budget or financial information:

To: Matthew.Lee [at] innercitypress.com
From: UN Spokesperson - Do Not Reply [at] un.org
Date: Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 4:59 PM

The State Department has acknowledged that its transcription was in error and has corrected the record, please see link below.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/07/229662.htm

The Ethics Office has agreed on the need to use the chartered plane because of the Secretary-General's need to travel to a number of locations in the Middle East at short notice, The Ethics Office notes that the Secretary-General interacts with all 193 Member States, and he is scrupulous at maintaining the independence of the UN when engaged in his political and diplomatic undertakings.

   This did not answer "when and how the UN Ethics Office was asked about the Secretary General accepting the gift of travel on the Qatar-funded, and the UN's estimate of the value of the gift; a statement of all rules applicable to receipt of this gift." 

  And so at the July 24 noon briefing, Inner City Press asked Haq to provide information about the last ten free trips provided to Ban or his senior staff by states or others. Haq cut the question off, belatedly providing a UN budget Secretary General travel figure -- $2,190,300 for 2014 / 2015 -- but not explaining why he hadn't simply emailed this to Inner City Press.

  Haq claimed the deadline was unclear. So that's why he held the information back? Here's the July 24, 2014, video:

  On the audio file, Haq referred to UN Radio. Here it is, for download at mp3 - but it cuts off the question asked of Ban about the Qatar-funded plane, that the State Department transcribed. 

The UN has previously censored its transcripts to omit the Free UN Coalition for Access and what was said to Ban; when Haq answered Inner City Press that Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir was dead, he "corrected" this in the transcript without ever telling Inner City Press that his answer was wrong, or had been "disappeared" in the transcript.

  On July 24 after Inner City Press asked for basic UN financial information -- last ten free trips -- Haq said, "You are not a prosecutor." Video here.
And here's the July 23, 2014 video:

On July 21, the UN belatedly answered Inner City Press' July 19 inquiry about Secretary General Ban Ki-moon accepting a free Qatar-funded, British registered private jet for his current travel about Gaza. Video hereand embedded below.

  On July 23 in Jerusalem, Ban Ki-moon was asked,"do you think it’s appropriate for Qatar to be paying for your flight here?"

  And Ban Ki-moon responded, "No – ladies and gentlemen, this is the 15th day since the crisis began.  We do not have much time to weigh the rules."

   Inner City Press, and now the Free UN Coalition for Access, have been pursuing this question, including with Transparency International which answered "it would seem that the Secretary General would have had to have been previous clearance to undertake such a paid trip by the Qatari government. This question should be posed to the Office of Ethics."

  And so on July 22, Inner City Press asked Ban's deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq if the UN Ethics Office was asked about accepting the free Qatar-funded private jet flights.

  Haq replied:

“I'm aware that as a standard policy, we inform the Ethics Office of all such offers...I don't know about this particular case. I know it for past cases, every time I have asked the Ethics Office about this, they have talked about being informed about this... They do approve these on the case of exceptional circumstances.”

Inner City Press asked Haq to get an answer from the Ethics Office, if they were asked before Ban began his current trip in the Qatar-funded jet.

Haq said, “I can do this... This is what has happened several times in the past.” 

  But apparently not this time. Ban said, "We do not have much time to weigh the rules." We'll stay on this.

   We'll have more on this.

At UN, Richard Falk Says France and Belgium May Be Liable for Dexia, Where UNclear, FauxGressives in the House

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 30 -- For financial involvement in settlements in Palestine, outgoing UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk says liability may attach not only to the bank Dexia, but also the governments of France and Belgium, which own post-bailout stakes in Dexia.

  Inner City Press asked Falk where they, and banks like Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi, might be sued, and if bank regulators which have allowed these activities might also be liable. Video here and embedded below.

Falk said he is not an expert in this, but that they might be "accessories" to the settlements, and that there is also an "ethical dimension."

Some doubt this, after the predatory lending meltdown, for which still no one has gone  to jail.

As had to happen, Falk was asked about his comments (or essay) after the Boston bombing. As the question was being asked, a self-described Wall Street Journal reporter said loudly, "And do you beat your wife?" A word was coined: FauxGressive.

Falk answered, among other things, that there's a reason things like the Boston bombing happen here, meaning the US. But what about the Kenya mall attack?

In the press conference as run by the UN, the first question was automatically handed to the UN Correspondents Association, some of whose Executive Board members not only have tried to get other media thrown out of the UN, which which held a faux UN briefing for Saudi-sponsored Syria rebel Ahmad al Jarba. Its president Pamela Falk made sure to say, as to Richard, "No relation." But why does the UN automatically give out the first question to what has become its UN Censorship Alliance? Watch this site.

   

On Syria, French FM Says He Knows What UN Report Says and When: Jumping BanKiMoon's (UN) Knotted Gun

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 12 -- For weeks the UN has said its report on chemical weapons in Syria will only say if they were used, not by whom. Since August 24 the UN has said it would release its report as soon as it was ready.

Now, from statements by Laurent Fabius in AFP this morning, and orchestrated leaks last night, neither it true.

Fabius says the UN report will be released on Monday -- in four full or five days -- and will implicate Assad. 

First, the report wasn't supposed to implicate (or "finger," as one UN scribe pre-spun it) anyone. See Inner City Press story, here.

Second, why would France get a heads-up about the report, and why would Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delay its release for five days? 

  The answer to the second appears to be: pure politics. With US Secretary of State John Kerry meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov today -- Fabrius brags of meeting with Kerry first, the pre-spin of the UN report never far away -- to release the UN report now would waste it.

  Better to play the card AFTER the Kerry - Lavrov meeting, the thinking seems to be, to gain maximum impact for what now may be seen as its dubious findings.

  Why dubious? This pre-release hardly bodes well. Plus, inconvenient as such connections may be for the UN, this is the same organization that exonerated itself for bringing cholera to Haiti, then refused to comment when its own experts reversed their findings. Click here for Inner City Press cholera stories.

  The truth, it seems, doesn't matter. Timing is everything. Watch this site.

Footnotes: Fabius saying the UN report will "implicate" Assad emanated from the shop of the WSJ's UN correspondents, cited to @CNNbrk. But at that time, it wasn't ON the @CNNbrk feed. Some appear to know the news before it happens, or the useful content of UN reports before they are released.

The UN should have to answer on this on Thursday. But, conveniently, it seems its whole noon briefing it given over to UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous. We'll have more on this. Watch this site.

   

UNCA Leaders Vow Presence at All UN Briefings, Sledgehammers, Social Media

By Matthew Russell Lee

 

UNITED NATIONS, February 16 – In an hour-long meeting Friday that ended in shouting down a person who was lamenting the decline and decay of the UN Correspondents Association, the bankruptcy of UNCA was made plain.

   Not financial bankruptcy -- though no written financial statements were provided, total cash of $237,940 was alluded to, the vast majority of it collected at UNCA's $250 a plate annual dinner. A member asked for a written report; this was referred to “Other Matters” but was never addressed.

   It was said that the 15 members of the Security Council and their spouses are let in for free.  Members were urged to now lobby the Council members about the layout of the Security Council stakeout, an issue on which UNCA apparently fell asleep in 2012 while they focused on trying to expel the investigative Press, first from UNCA then from the UN as a whole.

   A “leader” of that drive, Reuters' Louis Charbonneau, bragged in Friday's meeting that French Ambassador Gerard Araud supports the tearing down of a wall near the so-called Turkish lounge; “we need more countries like that,” Charbonneau said.

   He also said, “we need a few people with sledgehammers - then problem solved.” This is the approach he and UNCA have taken to flyers of the new Free UN Coalition for Access which note his role in filing stealth complaints with the UN, using his Reuters credentials -- the flyers just get torn down.

   Charbonneau's twist is to also suggest to the UN that it charge money for “a new paint job” after the flyers are torn down.

   This passive-aggressive approach was on display Friday when as soon as an UNCA member objected to a financial proposal, Charbonneau immediately called for a vote, like the last President of the General Assembly from Qatar used to it.

   One of those actually witnessed tearing flyers down has been Tim Witcher of Agence France Presse, who at Friday's meeting spoke only once, to urge members to send “e-mail and letters” to member states.

  One wonder if the regurgitation of fawning coverage might be part of the plan to get the support of some member states?

    Referring to the Turkish Lounge, Joe Lauria of the Wall Street Journal reminisced about accessing Sergei Lavrov there. More recently, Lauria mocked an alleged victim of sexual harassment: after the person said that their complaint was news, Lauria said sarcastically that he couldn't cover it since he had not made a recording of it.

   On the other hand, Charbonneau said that this fight about the wall “might be a story” in the media; new UNCA president Pamela Falk of CBS said that on the wall the help of the Committee to Protect Journalists is being obtained.

   This seems strange, since only this week CPJ's Rob Mahoney declined to answer Inner City Press' question about the UN's accreditation rules barring journalists based on geography and “principles,” calling these “in house” matters.

 

Under Falk, the focus of UNCA seems to be on trying to prop up the organization's credibility, or at least visibility. The first presentation in the meeting, made by Sylviane Zehil of L'Orient le Jour, was that the Executive Committee voted that its members, or an alternative, should ask a question for UNCA “at every noon briefing.”

  This was never done before; when Falk recently thanked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's deputy spokesman Eduardo Del Buey for coming to the noon briefing, even Del Buey had to laugh.

  Falk said she aims to send “everything” to UNCA members, including floor plans of the Security Council that the UN for some reason didn't just post itself so that all journalists could see, rather than trying to prop up the sagging UNCA.

   But several members have noted that Falk does NOT “sending everything” -- where for example is the transcript or recording of her and 12 opaque UNCA apostles' February 7 session with Ban Ki-moon?

There was talk of revamping UNCA's Constitution,using a lawyer who did the same for UNCA's affiliate the Dag Hammarskjold Fund for Journalism.

  UNCA has already violated its Constitution three times in the past two months - late on elections, leaving power, and general meeting - but noted Friday the Constitution's failure to address new and social media. The supporter in charge followed the meeting with a sycophantic tweet about how “excellent” it had all been. Compared to what?

   Falk also bragged that UNCA will be more active in social media, saying that Denis Fitzgerald of Saudi Press Agency will “spearhead” this. Since Falk took over, UNCA “leaders” have set up at least three anonymous social media accounts to try to undermine FUNCA and co-founder Inner City Press, by sending false messages to country's missions to the UN.

  For the record, Fitzgerald wrote in last weekend to say he is “not a part” of fake social media accounts. This was noted, though he has yet to respond to follow up questions sent to him, and he did not appear at UNCA's February 15 meeting.

   Now that Fitzgerald's been said to “spearhead” Team UNCA's social media, his response will become clear. Likewise, there is more to be said about this “annual” meeting, but this is it for now.

  Other than “the wall,” much of the meeting was about how 21 broadcasters -- including Falk's CBS? -- intend to use UNCA as a conduit for money to the UN.

   It was said that “the UN will deal only with UNCA.” That is the problem, increasingly untenable. Watch this site.