UN GATE / SDNY COURT, April 5 – The United Nations in South Sudan has acknowledged that a staff member has tested positive for Coronavirus COVID-19, while claming it is taking all precautions.
But the transcript of a meeting with staff by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' representative in Juba, David Shearer, leaked to Inner City Press by outraged staff, shows for example that the UNMISS mission has been running busses for local staff without social distancing.
They analogize it to when the UN brought cholera to Haiti and then lied about it for years, and has still to pay any compensation under Antonio Guterres "who instead spends the public's money on his own trips to Lisbon." Guterres and his spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming have refused all Press questions on this, choosing to ban critical Inner City Press and take staged questions from Xinhua.
Here's a first part of the transcript from Shearer's meeting with staff, after the misleading press release by Shearer's underling about COVID-19:
"The United Nations in South Sudan has confirmed a case of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) among its staff... The UN has previously imposed a travel freeze on all staff travelling into the country, ensured staff who arrived prior to the ban are self-quarantined for 14 days, introduced work-from-home measures to reduce numbers of people in offices, and enforced social distancing rules and frequent hand washing by all personnel."
This is false. From the UN Mission in South Sudan transcript leaked to Inner City Press:
Leda Limann: SRSG, these are national staff specific. The majority of UNMISS staff have family members in Uganda. Can you please engage with Ugandan authorities?
SRSG Shearer: This is a bit tricky because for national staff, obviously, their country is here, and we expect them to work here and that is why we employ national staff because they are here. I think, what we can certainly look at what happens in the future, I am in contact with the Resident Coordinator in Uganda to see what options there are to visit family members. But it is not possible for the moment to evacuate people from South Sudan to Uganda because they are South Sudanese, that is why they are here. But we will look at the possibility of being able to access their families. At the moment, we have got no ability to be allowed into Uganda. Nobody has the possibility of entering Uganda and, likewise, coming back into South Sudan. So, we are a bit caught but let’s see what happens in the future.
Leda Limann: National staff use the shuttle bus twice daily and the social distancing is not maintained in the bus. Is the mission taking any measures on this?
Nope... More of the transcript is on Patreon here.
The United Nations held a four speakers, one M.C. event to raise funds for itself off of Coronavirus on March 25. But three of the participants had refused to make public even the UN's bare-bones financial disclosures: Mark Lowcock, Henrietta Fore of UNICEF and Melissa Fleming. The head man, Antonio Guterres, has lied on his form, omitting his financial links to convicted UN briber CEFC China Energy. So their credibility is questionable.
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