By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Periscope
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - CJR - PFT
UN GATE, Oct 26 – In the United Nations from which SG Antonio Guterres has banned Inner City Press 846 days for asking about his complicity in the killing of civilians in Cameroon and their mass imprisonment by China in Xinjiang, on September 1 Inner City Press wrote to the Niger Mission, as incoming UN Security Council president, with questions about Cameroon, Somalia and UNsexploitation.
The email address on the Niger Mission's UN web page did not work; it bounced back. A Direct Message on Twitter to @Niger_ONU was not answered.
And now as the UN closes down for COVID spread multiple sources say it is the Niger Mission.
The United Nations in New York will be closed on October 27 as at least five members on a member state's mission have tested positive for COVID-19, letter first tweeted by Inner City Press here:
"Following information from the Secretariat regarding five COVID infections at a Mission of a Member State, the advice of the Medical Unit is to cancel in-person meetings at UNHQ tomorrow, Tuesday 27 October, pending contact tracing. Accordingly, after consulting the Main Committee Chairs, and in light of the need to safeguard public health, all in-person meetings of the Main Committees of the General Assembly tomorrow are cancelled."
This is the UN whose Secretary General Antonio Guterres, a week ago bragged about evading quarantine, video here. This while his spokesman Stephane Dujarric briefing maskless in a windowless room, five feet from equally maskless correspondents from Al Jazeera and other state media, here. Their UN should leave New York.
This as Sani I. Mahamadou, Deputy Chief of Staff to Niger's president, bragged online of a "Very big day for Niger, who begins his month of presidency of the United Nations Security Council." They're off to a terrible start.
Apparently Niger PR Abdou Abarry could only handle questions from pre-screened in-house correspondents, one of whose media has no story by her since 2017, another with no stories at all, at least one - actually, more -- a repeated #MeToo violator. Periscope here.
Niger has not said a word about the slaughter in Cameroon, nor about the UN Peacekeeping sexploitation exposed by Inner City Press.
The Program belatedly went up - with countries on which Niger ignored and censored questions: Myanmar, Somalia, where UNMAS sent local staff to be killed, and Colombia and South Sudan. There will be Francophonie on September 8. We have now written directly to the Mission's 404 spokesman - and will have more on this.
When Guterres' spokes- / hatchetman Stephane Dujarric holds his noon briefings this month while refusing all questions from Inner City Press despite an on camera promise. And Indonesia? We'll report.
Watch this site.
