By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 10 -- With UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visit to Korea greeted by artillery fire from the North, there are few answers from Ban's spokespeople in New York.
They had no comment on crackdowns on the press in Sudan and Cote d'Ivoire, nor on protests of the UN in Nepal and even just across First Avenue by Haitians demanding reparations for the introduction of cholera.
Even why Ban gave out the post of "Commissioner-General of the UN" to Samuel Koo in South Korea did not get an answer, twenty hours after it was asked at Tuesday's noon briefing.
Nor, despite two requests from Inner City Press, has the UN been able to provide any information about Deputy Secretary General Asha-Rose Migiro's month-long "official travel" in Tanzania.
Now comes word that Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky is taking even more time off, reportedly from now until September 17. During this unheard of absence by a lead spokesman, Nesirky's acting deputy Farhan Haq is "canvassing" select reporters in order to say that they don't actually want the UN to hold noon briefings, despite events ranging from Syria to Yemen to Somalia and Sudan.
Even though Haq runs "his" briefing in such a way that it takes less than ten minutes a day -- by limiting the Press to three questions, most of which are not answered -- even this is apparently too much, despite there being other people in the UN Office of the Spokesperson.
Forget whether or not the UN will comment on crackdowns in Cote d'Ivoire or Bahrain: as an organization that has over 100,000 armed personnel out in the field, is it too much that they should stand and take questions for ten minutes a day, five days a week?
Especially when, as of today, the UN has in place no chief of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, as Alain Le Roy leaves as long ago announced, and the next Frenchman -- Jerome Bonnafont, Inner City Press reported six weeks ago -- is not in place, not even interviewed? We'll see.
Update: some Missions and Permanent Representative of the UN, even among the Permanent Five members of the Security Council, somewhat surprisinly watch the UN noon briefing on UN TV, and some have expressed surprise at the length of leave and move to shut off even the short televised briefings. But are the member states being canvassed? Who is being canvassed? Watch this site.
