By Matthew Russell Lee, 24rd in a Series
UNITED NATIONS, January 23 – Before Ban Ki-moon left the UN, he involved it in one US federal bribery case - and another was filed against his brother and nephew days after he left.
But not before Ban had evicted and still restricts Inner City Press which asked him about his nephew Dennis Bahn working at the UN's landlord Colliers, for example in May 2015, here.
On January 23, Inner City Press asked Ban's holdover spokesman at the UN Stephane Dujarric if he had even seen the Ban Ki-moon diary now being cited in South Korea before threatening the press for its reporting. There was no clear answer. Story here; video here.
This is Ban Ki-moon's pattern. Even back in 2011, beyond trying to have Inner City Press "disappeared" from Google News, Ban's guards pushed a journalist who asked Ban a question, Inner City Press here - and NY Daily News here.
Now in South Korea, where Inner City Press' exclusives including about brother Ban Ki Ho mining in Myanmar with a UN delegation are credited, Ban is being exposed as what he is. He can only fill out a condolence book when he has prepared notes, there as here.
He was overheard, with Lee Do-woon to whom the UN told Inner City Press to direct all of its UN questions, called students he had just met with "bastards." It is reminiscent of this, from Inner City Press' 2008 archives, part of its ongoing Ban's Bad Decade series:
"UNITED NATIONS, May 28 -- There are reasons that relations with the press can go awry. This column is devoted to only one recent example, with the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary General of the UN, the OSSG.
Just before Ban Ki-moon left to travel to Myanmar to meet with Senior General Than Shwe, the UN press corps was summoned to a question and answer session with him at the media stakeout in front of the Security Council chamber. One of the junior members of the OSSG came down and said that only two or three questions could be taken. Then he whispered instructions to technicians, "We would appreciate it if you don't give the microphone to [Inner City Press]."
This seems more controlling that necessary, given that the OSSG by pointing tries, usually successfully, to decide who gets to ask Ban a question. It is possible that Ban does not even know of these things done in his name. Inner City Press wrote obliquely about the incident on May 20, choosing not to identify the frozen-out media.
During Ban Ki-moon's side-trip to China on May 24, the day he left Myanmar so as to not be present during the controversial polling in the cyclone zone, occupying one of only three "press" seats on the plane was a representative of UN Radio. Since this is an in-house organ, which pointedly did not ask Ban any questions about Aung San Suu Kyi, back in New York, in an article about events in Myanmar, Inner City Press included a half-joking footnote which in admitted hyperbole said "the UN, on Ban's jaunt to China, allowed very few outside reporters, but made a space for its own in-house radio to come along, as Than Shwe himself might have done."
At the end of Ban Ki-moon's decade as UN Secretary General, covering up genocides in Sri Lanka, Burundi and Yemen and evicting the Press which asked about (t)his corruption, Inner City Press is reviewing Ban's tenure, year by year. See also this Twitter Moment.
And now Ban aver evicting the Press in New York threatens to sue, for ambition.
While Ban threatens further necessary measures according to one Korean media -- Ban refused to release the threat letter; Inner City Press appeared on JTBC television news in Korea, here -- others are given statistics about how much Ban traveled during his UN decade.This special service to some Korean media, while evicting the investigative Press, was a hallmark of the Ban era, which early on featured false Ban claims of transparency, which would culminate in 2017 with Ban unwilling to state his net worth in 2007 and now.
