As UN Aid Chief Valerie Amos Leaves, Inner City Press Asks If Post Is UK's Like France & Peacekeeping, US & Political Affairs

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 26 -- When the UN announced on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving the departure of Humanitarian Affairs chief Baroness Valerie Amos, Inner City Press asked UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq if the vacancy will be advertised for candidates from all countries, or if it is set aside for Amos' United Kingdom.

  Amos' predecessor was UK Sir John Holmes, just as current UN Department of Political Affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman's predecessor was American B. Lynn Pascoe, now back at the UN on the UN Peacekeeping Operations review panel. UN Peacekeeping is even more closely held, with France controlling it four times in a row, now at a nadir with Herve Ladsous.

  Haq insisted that the Humanitarian Affairs vacancy will be open to candidates from all regions. But when Inner City Press asked if it will be advertised for example in The Economist, Haq did not answer.

  There have been rumblings, noted by Inner City Press, of DPA chief Jeffrey Feltman leaving -- and of the US perhaps trading Political Affairs for Peacekeeping. But that theory seems to have been that US State Department Number Three Wendy Sherman would move up to William Burns' deputy spot, opening her position for the return of Feltman.

  Now that the Obama administration has put Tony Blinken into the State Department Deputy post, as one insider told ICP, “Feltman stays at the UN.”

Even without any double switch, Ladsous is under fire atop DPKO, not only for refusal to answer questions, back to rapes in Minova in DR Congo, but now in Tabit in Darfur as well. 

 Haq, like lead UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on November 26, would not when Inner City Press asked confirm receipt of a letter, critical of Ladsous' DPKO, from Darfuri groups, here. 

 Outgoing UN Security Council president Gary Quinlan of Australia not only confirmed receipt of the letter - he circulated it to the other Council members. A press officer of UK mission to the UN tells Inner City Press, "I can confirm that we received the letter indirectly." We'll have more on this, and on Amos' work while at the UN, and perhaps reason(s) for leaving.

  On November 25, it was Quinlan and not Amos who took question after Amos' briefing on Syria. How much will Amos speak, publicly, before her departure at the end of March? Much, is the hope and goal of the Free UN Coalition for Access. Watch this site.

   

Amid UN Censorship Alliance Ball, UNanswered Questions on Haiti Cholera and the UN's Role in Sri Lanka

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 18 -- One might think that the work of a journalists' group would be to push to broader access, more answers, and against censorship. In the case of the United Nations Correspondents Association, holding a $250 a plate dinner tonight with the very people they purport to cover, this would be incorrect.

  UNCA is so close to the UN Secretariat that its leaders have tried to get media which ask hard questions thrown out of the UN. (Click here for how UNCA tried to expel Inner City Press for reporting on the past financial relationship between UNCA's president and the Sri Lanka ambassador whose war crimes denial film UNCA screened in the UN.)

  These questions include the UN dodging legal accountability for bringing cholera to Haiti, on which Inner City Press again asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky at Wednesday's noon briefing.

  When throwing Inner City Press out of the UN failed, and was exposed by documents obtained from Voice of America under the Freedom of Information Act, the UNCA leaders in 2013 under Pamela Falk engaged in anonymous social media trolling, setting out counterfeit Twitter accounts impersonating not only Inner City Press but also the new Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info. 

  Now even the dinner is in decline. In the past the master of ceremonies has been Richard Roth of CNN, quite the prankster. This year it is Laura Trevelyan of the BBC, who during a 2009 trip to Sri Lanka with Ban Ki-moon and UK humanitarian chief Sir John Holmes not only didn't report Holmes on the record comment that he deleted all complaining emails from Tamils -- she said the Press reporting this "ruined" relations with Holmes for her and, for example, Reuters.

  The Reuters bureau chief, UNCA's first vice president and shamelessly UNCA prize awardee tonight, went on to spy for the UN, in essence, turning over anti-Press internal UNCA documents to the UN three minutes after promising not to do so. Story here, document here, audio here.

  But UNCA must have done some good in 2013, right? Well, not really. Its belated 2013-14 book's UNCA's "Message from the President" says that in 2013 "we held dozens of press briefings by diplomats and policymakers in our new meeting room."

  This is patently false. Dozens means at least 24. There was Saudi sponsored Syria rebel Jarba, and some chefs; an ironic "Transparency" briefing and a JFK book (by neither a diplomat nor policy maker). There is no way that 24 briefings were held in the room the UN gives to its Censorship Alliance. So why say "dozens of press briefings"? Well, it's UNCA - the UN's Censorship Alliance. Watch this site.

   

Sri Lanka and the UK: Too Little, Too Late, Between Libya, Somalia Journalists and Selling Weapons in the Gulf?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 17 -- Certainly the authoritarian nature of the Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka became apparent to more people during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Click here for longer analysis of the CHOGM from this reporter, on Beacon Reader,focused on the UN Secretariat's silence. 

  But can it be said that the UK government, for example, was unaware of that government's slaughtering of civilians in 2009? At the UN in New York, Inner City Press repeatedly asked then Ambassador John Sawers, and when he came to the UN, foreign minister David Miliband. 

  Then as now, the UK controlled the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; Inner City Press put the question to John Holmes (who, during Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's "victory tour" to the north in May 2009 vowed to never speak to Inner City Press again due to itreporting his on the record comments about deleting emails from Tamils.)

  And so now when David Cameron and William Hague say they are shocked and will belatedly push for an investigation of the 40,000 deaths before March, how should it be interpreted? As a Permanent Five member of the UN Security Council, the UK is in the position to have done something - and didn't -- and to do something now. Will it?

  The UK's use of its P5 seat, even on agenda items on which it "has the pen," seems politicized. It has not drafted or proposed press statements when journalists have been killed in Somalia (compare to the recent rapid statement on journalists killed in Mali). This has yet to be explained.

This weekend, it has apparently not moved for a statement on the killing of civilians in Libya, on which it also has the pen. This also has not been explained; it goes beyond, and is more recent then, the cited Bloody Sunday.

Cameron left Sri Lanka and went directly to try to sell UK attack aircraft to the United Arab Emirates; some in Bahrain find the UK comments for human rights defenders in Sri Lanka belied by the treatment of similar defenders in Bahrain.

Will Sri Lanka, or the UK, act on this before or during March? Watch this site.

   

Shut-Down US Government Compared to Lebanon, Feltman's DPA Pitches Maldives, Not Sri Lanka: Report Still Withheld?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 4 -- During this week's shutdown (or slim-down) of the US government, analogies to various other countries and failed states have been made.

  Now former US State Department official Jeffrey Feltman, whom Inner City Press has covered this week in meetings with Iran's Hassan Rouhani and Lebanon's caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati, has brought the analogy home.

  Feltman is quoted as texting Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri that he moved on from the US government when it became too much like... Lebanon.

  At the UN, Feltman's Department of Political Affairs is sometimes kept from the biggest ticket items by the big-footing of the Permanent Five members of the Security Council, but it is active on other issues. 

  When on October 2, just before the Security Council's Great Lakes trip which Inner City Press has so far covered here and here took off, DPA at its own request briefed the Security Council about the Constitutional crisis in the Maldives.

  While the UK said that its Commonwealth has already expressed concern at delay in second round of Presidential elections, it should be noted that this Commonwealth still plans to go to Sri Lanka in November for its Heads of Government Meeting.

  Are the UK's concerns consistent? Are Ban Ki-moon's and Feltman's DPA's? Under Ban Ki-moon, did DPA ever ask for a Security Council meeting? Or was it only the British chief of Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes? And what did that come to? And where is Ban Ki-moon's report on the UN's inaction in 2009? Watch this site.

   

As Secrecy of UN Security Council Debated in Secret,View from Media Table Gone For Now: Mali, DRC, Peacekeeping Failures

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 15 -- Not only is the UN Security Council secretive: even academic discussions about it are cloaked in secrecy.

  For two days there has been such a confab on Long Island in New York. In full disclosure, Inner City Press petitioned the sponsor, to attend and report from it. It was explained that it is an invitation-only scholarly retreat. So, no.

  But that's not to say that it can't and shouldn't be covered. Alternatively described as off the record or "Chatham House," we will summarize some issues without attributing them. 

  As an initial thought, in an age of social media, Chatham House ain't what it used to be. But we're going beyond the call of duty, and no even naming the sponsor. It's the thoughts that count.

  An easy consensus was reached that Security Council reform will not happen any time soon. It was diagnosed that France and UK favor some reform, not because they are reformers, but because they gain more from Permanent membership on the Council they others: the "illusion" of world power status. 

 If the Council continues to lose legitimacy, so do they.

  For that reason, they do most of the work, drafting up to 80% of Security Council "products" like resolutions and press statements. It is not clear if the correlation between such "pen-holding" and former colonial status was raised. If not, it should have been.

  Likewise the failure of UN Peacekeeping under Herve Ladsous to follow through on the UN's announced Human Rights Due Diligence and conditionality policies. 

 When the 391st and 41st Battalions of the Congolese Army committed at least 135 rapes in Minova in late November 2012, first Ladsous refused Press questions, then threatened to withdraw support. But this never happened, and there have been very few prosecutions. Still Ladsous refuses the question, May 29 video here. So where is the Security Council on this?

  It was noted that the Security Council is more likely to get involved in civil wars in Africa, and for a time in Europe, than anywhere else: read, Asia. 

 Consider this: while 40,000 civilians were killed in Sri Lanka in May 2009, the Security Council did not have a single official meeting on the topic, just a few "informal informals" with John Holmes and Vijay Nambiar down in the now-closed basement of the General Assembly.

  And on June 14 after the acclamation of John Ashe as new President of the GA, one of the generals most responsible, Shavendra Silva, toasted Ashe on behalf of the Asia Pacific Group. So it goes at the UN.

  Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, DRC and Libya were lumped together it seems as example of robut peacekeeping. But Libya was simply the authorization of a no-fly zone which turned into much more -- sure to come up if one is requested over Syria.

 Cote d'Ivoire was, well, a French thing, and DRC to some degree the same. And Mali? Should UN Peacekeeping be given over as it has been to four French heads of DPKO in a row?

  Some outside of the box topics arose, such as the place going forward of cyber security -- Chapter Seven travel or surfing bans against hackers, anyone? The monthly rotation of the Council presidency was praised but admitted to lead to a lack of continuity.

  Inner City Press would add, also a lack of transparency and accountability. Take for example the opaque decision that starting with the June 1 move-back there would no longer by a media worktable in front of the Council.

  Who decided? Inner City Press through the new Free UN Coalition for Access has asked and will continue to ask Permanent members of the Council. The blame is shifted to the UN Secretariat, or to certain Big Media members of the UN Correspondents Association board. 

 Who will own up to, or reverse, this reduction in media access? Watch this site.

At UN on Sri Lanka, Ban Ki-moon Panel Under Deputy Eliasson Met Egeland, De Mistura and Schulenburg, To Finish in June: Public?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 9 -- Four years ago in May 2009 the Sri Lankan Army was advancing north toward a "bloodbath on the beach" in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed.

  The UN has been criticized for its inaction (and some of its actions) in Sri Lanka, and is now again studying itself to come up with recommendations. A panel under Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson was announced, in response to an Inner City Press question, on December 5, 2012. What has it accomplished?

  On May 9, 2013 Inner City Press asked Eliasson where things stand. He answered that earlier in the day he had an hour and a half meeting about the Sri Lanka review, by video, with such "outside experts" as Staffan De Mistura, Jan Egeland and Michael von Schulenburg, who was thrown out of Sierra Leone.

(The 2009 successor to Egeland and Eliasson as Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes, has been interfacing with UN-linked NGOs, but apparently not on this report on Sri Lanka. When Inner City Press quoted him about deleting at least some e-mails from Tamils, his staff complained with UN Media Accreditation. And see second footnote below.)

The goal, Eliasson said, is to come up with recommendations to not have this happen again (he cited Myanmar and Syria). He will get the report, from two of his staff members and Michael Keating, and assess it and give it to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, all by mid-June.

Will the report be public? That is a question that will be asked. Watch this site.

Footnotes: 1) Following up, Inner City Press asked the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay if there has been any progress on her visiting Sri Lanka. The answer was, Discussions continuing with Sri Lanka on possible dates.."

  2) When the Sri Lankan government screened its war crimes defense film inside the UN and Inner City Press wrote about it and some background, a fight began that continues to this day. Most recently, a pro government Sri Lankan told Inner City Press they will "complain to UNCA." And what? (Though even the threat is quite telling.) Due to attempts at censorship, for example demands that articles be taken down, Inner City Press co-founded the Free UN Coalition for Access. So, send away. We may have more on this.

On Sri Lanka, After Ban's UN Silent on Attack on Newspaper, Arson Ensues

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 14 -- After the Tamil newspaper Uthayan in Kilinochchi was attacked on April 3, and the UN said nothing, on April 8 Inner City Press asked UN Security General Ban Ki-moon's deputy spokesman Eduardo Del Buey about the attack:

Inner City Press: on Sri Lanka, last week, there was an attack on a pretty well-known newspaper there, Uthayan, which is a Tamil newspaper, who is right in the zone in which there was the so-called bloodbath on the beach, named by John Holmes at the time, and I am wondering, given the Secretary-General’s involvement in the area, does he have any comment on what seems to be a direct attack on an opposition newspaper in the former war zone that he visited?

Deputy Spokesperson Del Buey: Well, I don’t have a comment on that particular attack, but as you know, the Secretary-General’s position is quite clear: all journalists must be allowed to carry out their work free of violence and free of intimidation.

Beyond the generic statement, nothing more came out of the UN.

  Now on April 13, after reports that access to Uthayan was blocked on the Internet in Sri Lanka, the newspaper's headquarters in Jaffna has been torched by arsonists equipped with automatic weapons.

  Way to speak up, Ban Ki-moon. His interlocutors in the Sri Lankan government have now claimed that the attacks are only to tarnish the image of the government. Kind of like the bloodbath on the beach?

Footnote: at a much lower level, inside the UN itself on March 18, Ban Ki-moon's Department of “Public Information” entered Inner City Press' office without notice or consent, then allowed others in, rifled through papers and took photographs including of Inner City Press' desk and bookshelf. Post-raid video here.

Right after Ban's spokesman was asked by BuzzFeed.com about the raid, suddenly the photos were leaked to BuzzFeed through an anonymous “Concerned UN Reporter” e-mail address. 

  Inner City Press and the new Free UN Coalition for Access have asked repeatedly how this happened, who was let in, why this year's president of the UN Correspondents Association, Pamela Falk of CBS, was allowed to take pictures. No answers, only legal threats to Inner City Press.This is how it works, in this UN. Watch this site.

Sri Lanka Trashes UN Blacking Out Ban Ki-moon on Giving Space to Rajapaksas, 2 Views

By Matthew Russell Lee

 

UNITED NATIONS, November 23 -- Twelve days after the UN released a redacted version of its Charles Petrie report into its actions and inactions during the killings in Sri Lanka in 2009, that country's Rajapaksa government belatedly responded -- in part by criticizing the redactions.

   When the reported was issued with portions blacked out, Inner City Press asked why. Next, it posted all of the redacted material -- it was as easy as copying the excised portions and pasting them into a word processing document.

   Then on November 12, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff Susana Malcorra to justify a particular redaction, in Paragraph 173, in which Ban said  "the Government should be given the political space to develop a domestic mechanism."

   Malcorra responded tersely that this was "twisting," and claimed that all redactions were either for staff safety or to retain the ability to deliberate. It seems Ban would cite the latter to black out his subordinates' advice -- but his own orders?

   And so while Inner City Press agrees, for once, with Sri Lanka's government that the redactions are wrong, there is a difference. The Rajapaksa government maintains that lines like Ban's were blacked out because, revealed, they make the Sri Lanka government look good.

   Our view, however, continues to be that Ban's quote was taken it because it makes him look bad. He did not push for accountability, as he has done -- with more Western backing -- elsewhere such as in Syria.

   The proof of this is the redaction of an opinion then former top UN humanitarian John Holmes, advising that the term "war crimes" not be used. This makes Holmes look bad, and perhaps explains him emerging from his sinecure in the British countryside to defend Ban's UN and himself.

  Inner City Press has re-posted the report as it appeared with redactions, and has gone behind the redactions. Here from Paragraph 173, the material the UN blacked out, but is now being "liberated" by Inner City Press, appears in brackets, followed by an explanation.

"the Secretary-General met with President Rajapaksa and urged him 'to uphold his commitment to establish an accountability process.' On 30 July the Policy Committee met again at UNHQ to address 'follow-up on accountability' in Sri Lanka. [Discussing whether or not the SecretaryGeneral should establish an international Commission of Experts, many participants were reticent to do so without the support of the Government and at a time when Member States were also not supportive. At the same time, participants also acknowledged that a Government-led mechanism was unlikely to seriously address past violations. The Secretary-General said that 'the Government should be given the political space to develop a domestic mechanism and that only if this did not occur within a limited time frame would the UN look at alternatives.] The meeting agreed"

  So Ban Ki-moon, even after being advised that a Sri Lankan "Government-led mechanism was unlikely to seriously address past violations," said Rajapaksa should be given more space -- and time.

  And as of November 2012, no one had been held accountable. In fact, one of the General most associated, including in Ban's report, with the killings in 2009, Shavendra Silva, was accepted by Ban Ki-moon as a UN "Senior Adviser on Peacekeeping Operations."

  (Ban told Inner City Press that this was a decision of member states; his head of Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous outright refused to answer this or any other Press question.)

 
   On September 6, 2011, Silva appeared with Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative Palitha Kohona at a film screening in the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, fallout written up by the SLC, here.

   Inner City Press waited to write this story until more than eight hours went by from submitting two simple questions to Ban's top three spokespeople on November 23, a workday at the UN in New York:

 

"Please provide the Secretariat's response to Sri Lanka Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement earlier today, including that the material redacted showed, in at least one case, the Secretary General on the side of the Sri Lankan government ( The Secretary General said that the Government should be given the political space to develop a domestic mechanism"), and

 

'the alleged intimidation of UN staff for delivery of humanitarian assistance is completely baseless, a position which has been endorsed by the former United Nations USG for Humanitarian Affairs.' [John Holmes]."

   Ban's spokesman forwarded other Inner City Press questions submitted at the same time to the spokesman for UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, Kieran Dwyer.

  But no acknowledgment, much less answer, was provided in eight hours to the above question. When and if there is a UN response, we will publish it. For now, here are the other deletions, and the Executive Summary which the UN removed. Watch this site.