By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - Song - Review
LITERARY UN GATE, Feb 10 -- When Kurt came out of One Dag he had an idea. He'd seen the Chinese dissident artist's posters, depicting athletes stopping to shoot a Uighur, and snowboarding on top of surveillance cameras like the bannisters skateboarders went down.
Kurt texted Martin Randall Long. "R u still in UN?"
"Yes," Long replied. "& we're supposed to come back in the afternoon. Run-around I'm sure."
"Print out those posters and take a few back in. Let's see what the UN does." Kurt knew, of course. Before he was thrown out, he'd posted on the inside glass door of the office he and Brazilian photographer Luiz shared the sign of a group they started, FUNCA, the Free UN Coalition for Access.
Soon enough a UN "Media Accreditation and Liaison" staffer, Chinese no less but any other nationality in the UN would have done it including American, told Kurt that if he didn't take the poster down, he would be thrown out. He had kept it up, until one day he came back to his supposed locked office and found it gone. They had the key. To his computer as well, probably. It was the beginning of the end. #GenocideGamesOfGuterres.
* * * * *
Michael Randall Long was aware of the ways that a censor could block a poster. An organization could say, Post no bills, an old world for anything affixed to a wall. But while an organization could say, no T-shirts with messages, could it really distinguish between types of messages, at least if they did not contain pornography?
Inside the UN, people not only bought and worse UNICEF t-shirt, they also had others with saccharine slogans like "Every Woman, Every Child." (To the UN Peacekeepers, that seemed to mean, rape or abuse EWEC). So Long and Gul put on their Badiucao shirts when they went back in - or after they got in, to be more precise.
Down in the basement of the General Assembly, where the UN hawked world peace shot glasses and golf tees, there was a public bathroom, that Kurt had used in the past to change into his blue Oxford cloth shirt before going to the UN noon briefings.
Inside, in the Men's and Women's bathrooms -- no UNisex in the UN -- Michael Randall Long and Gul each put on a Badiucao shirt, then met back out by the soda and potato chip vending machines. They went back up the spiral staircase to General Assembly lobby.
But they didn't get far.
One UN guard pointed them out, and spoke into a walkie-talking. Soon six guards appeared, led by a seventh in a white shirt.
"You know you can't wear that here," the officer announced.
"Where what here?" Long replied.
"The shirt. I'm going to have to ask you to take it off, or to leave."
Gul cut in. "But we paid twenty dollars to be here. Each."
"There are rules in this Organization," the officer said.
"What, rules to protect China for criticism?" Gul asked.
As the guards looked at each other, Long added in, "Or to protect Fat Tony Guterres?"
The officer in the white shirt shook his head and said to the others, "Take them out."
Gul was getting into this, figuring they couldn't just do it like China. "What, take us out like kill us?"
Two guards grabbed her, one on each arm. Four more had come over, in thick bullet proof jackets marked ESU. One of the flashed an automatic weapon, what looked like an Uzi.
"You're going to shoot us?" Gul demanded. Other tourists stared over, most of them moving away. Nothing to see here.
Long decided to play lawyer. "What is your name?" he demanded from the white shirted guard.
"You don't have to tell them," White Shirt said to the others. They were already being pushed out through the silver revolving doors with the relief sculptures of peace scenes. There was some other art work on the plaza but Martin Randall Long didn't have time to see it, they were pushing him so fast.
"My name, by the way, is Ronald Dobbins," the guard said. "Roland E. Dobbins." #GenocideGamesOfGuterres.
* * * *
There was a protest, albeit a small one, headlined by a Long Island politician in the Dag Hammarskjold Park, surrounded by police. Some of the protesters wore the powder blue masks that had come to symbolize the Uighur issue. Kurt, on his way out from and already banned from One Dag, pulled out his phone and was about to start streaming, or trying to stream, when across First Avenue he saw a commotion, and a person he recognized.
It was Michael Randall Long, being pushed out of the UN by a guard whom Kurt also recognized. Kurt ran across the Avenue, past a bronze statue of a man with a briefcase, a symbol of UN corporate inaction perhaps, and yelled, trying to get Dobbins to stay outside the gate so he could film him. Again.
Dobbins looked up and smiled. "I told you," he said loudly to Kurt. "I told you you would never get back in."
Actually Kurt had been coming to think it might be best to do this fight from outside, without having to make compromises just to be able to sit once a day surrounded by complicit careerists a/k/a correspondents and feel good asking questions that the UN never answered. That was a US State Department move.
"F*ck you, Dobbins," Kurt yelled, free. "One day you'll get your Nuremburg. Maybe."
These comparisons weren't helpful, and were one of the things that kept Kurt from the Long Island protest in the park. But whatever. Kurt jogged across the little plaza with benches in front of the UN's Visitors' Entrance. He said to Gul, "Are you alright?"
"My parents are in worse shape," Gul replied. "But what do we do now?"
Kurt thought of interviewing her, right here, for his vlog. But maybe he should call other, so called "real," media. Would the guys to the right come and cover this, as one of them had the time that he was first barred entry here, on July 5, 2018?
Kurt was searching his phone for their number or email address (he mostly communicated with them, one way, by tagging one of them in photos on Twitter) when a van pulled up in the red-painted bus lane and a half dozen men got out.
They came over and got right to the point. They grabbed Michael Randall Long by the t-shirt, tearing it, and pushed him to the ground.
"What the f*ck" Kurt started to say - the UN guards including Dobbins had ripped his shirt, too, back on July 3, 2018 -- when two of the men came over him. One grabbed his phone.
"This is America!" Kurt yelled dramatically.
"Not here," one of the men said. And through the UN Gate, Kurt saw Dobbins watching, and laughing.
"Whycha call Eric Adams," Dobbins shouted through the gate. "This is international territory. And we of the same mind." #GenocideGamesOfGuterres.
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From January 21, 2022: UNSG Antonio Guterres: This visit to the Olympics is not a political visit. We consider that the Olympic Games are an extremely important manifestation in today's world of the possibility of unity, of the possibility of mutual respect, of the possibility of cooperation, of peoples of different cultures, of different religions, of different ethnicities. And this is more important than ever when we see xenophobia, when we see racism, when we see white supremacy, when we see anti‑Semitism, when we see anti‑Muslim hatred proliferating all over the world... That is the reason why I am going to the Olympic Games. And it has nothing to do with my opinions about the different policies that take place in the People's Republic of China.
Spokesman Dujarric: Okay, sir, I think you're then off the hook.
Will Guterres be taking his Deputy Amina J. Mohammed, supportive of the killing and targeted detentions perpetrated by Buhari of Nigeria? See, Identity Thieves - and, forthcoming, Genocide Games of Guterres. For now, Belt and Roadkill.
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