UN Budget Committee Fights on Gaza and R2P As Kicks "Human Resources Management" Down the Road Blaming Delay By Absent Guterres, Excluding Press

By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT CEFC Video

UNITED NATIONS, December 22 – When the UN Budget Committee met on Saturday night in a UN that SG Antonio Guterres has banned Inner City Press from for its coverage of the Committee and of Guterres' conflicts of interest, there were fights on Responsibility to Protect, Gaza and kicking Human Resources Management down the road. Tweeted thread here.

  Cuba made its annual amendment to say Responsibility to Protect was never approved by the UN. Austria for the EU responded it was approved in UNSC Resolution 1366 in 2001. Cuba's amendment had 24 yes votes, 68 no, and 48 abstentions including India.

   Israel put forward an amendment to not fund an inquiry into Gaza. It got, voting with it, the US, Liberia, and Australia the country of the Committee's chair Gillian Elizabeth Bird. Twelve abstained.

   Human Resources Management failed, with Egypt for the Group of 77 blaming it on Guterres' Secretariat giving documents too late. Guterres was long gone, refusing to answer to where or how much he is spending. (Inner City Press ran a scoop seeming to require responses by OIOS, even impeachment, here.)
   Egypt mourned again this failure at the end of the Fifth at 8 pm, and wished well incoming G77 chair Palestine. Bring it on - but hold Guterres and his regime of censorship for corruption to account. While UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was refusingthroughout 2018 to begin any UN audit into China Energy Fund Committee, implicated in the UN bribery prosecution US v Patrick Ho, Guterres had a secret.

   Guterres was and it seems still is connected with and compensated by a company which was trying to sell its oil and gas business to China Energy Fund Committee in 2018. Guterres' failure to disclose and refusal to audit was a direct conflict of interest, which he has tried to cover up by roughing up and banning Inner City Press which asked him about it. (See January 2018 press conference here, July 2018 roughing up by Guterres' UN Security here, banning letter via Press Freedom Tracker here.)

   For years Guterres received money as a board member of the Calouste Galbenkian Foundation, which despite its name is the 100% owner of Partex Oil and Gas. Partex has operations in Angola, Abu Dhabi, Brazil, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Oman and Portugal. It was to a Portuguese court that Guterres, while justifying no listing some of his income, disclosed in 2016 that he was paid at least € 2735 per month for his position with the Gulbenkian Foundation.

   But while a now deleted Foundation web page (archived here) stated that Guterres continued with Gulbenkian into 2018, Guterres did not list it on his most recent, and so far lone, UN Public Financial Disclosure, which covered 2016 ("Disclosing financial and other interests for the 2016 reporting year"). 

  So why did Guterres disclose his position with the Club of Madrid, but not with the Gulbenkian Foundation / Partex Oil and Gas? It is worth noting that Guterres' wife Catarina Vaz Pinto has also been connected to Gulbenkian.

   Following the roughing up and banning from the UN of Inner City Press which has covered the CEFC scandal throughout, Guterres' head of Global Communications Alison Smale promised UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression David Kaye, who asked, that the UN would still answer Inner City Press' written questions.

   But as 2018 came to a close Guterres' spokesmen Stephane Dujarric and Farhan Haq left unanswered 36 questions in a row from Inner City Press, including this: “Beyond the 35 questions from Inner City Press you refused to answer this week, this is a request on deadline that you (1) state when SG Guterres left his position on the Gulbenkian Foundation,

(2) state why Gulbenkian was not listed on SG Guterres' public financial disclosure which covered 2016; 

(3) explain how it is not a conflict of interest for SG Guterres to have refused to start an audit of CEFC in the UN, as requested by Inner City Press in January 2018, given CEFC's bid for the oil business of Gulbenkian. 

Also, again, state why under SG Guterres there have been no updates to the UN public financial disclosures since those filed for 2016. Also, again, explain your refusal to answer any of Inner City Press' questions this week despite USG Smale's statements to GAP, me and UNSR David Kaye. On deadline.” 

   The question was also sent to the e-mail addresses of Guterres, his chief of staff Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, his Deputy Amina J. Mohammed, and Smale, who earlier in the week told Inner City Press she would take “under advisement” her 17 August 2018 pretextual withdrawal of Inner City Press decade long UN media accreditation.
  It seems clear that Guterres and his team have engaged in censorship for corruption, to conceal a blatant conflict of interest by Guterres. It has been raised by Inner City Press to the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, and others.  Watch this site.

Back on 5 December 2018 Patrick Ho was found guilty of seven of eight counts of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and month laundering. (He was only not guilty on money laundering in Chad - where the bribe was not through any US bank but in cash, $2 million in a gift box). The evidence showed that the NGO he ran, China Energy Fund Committee, used its ongoing UN consultative status to pay bribes to Ugandan foreign minister - and Ashe's successor as President of the UN General Assembly -- Sam Kutesa.. He was working with precedessor Vuk Jeremicwhile Jeremic was UN PGA. CEFC even offered weapons, tanks and drones, to Chad's long time president Idriss Deby for oil blocks or a stake in the Chad Cameroon pipeline. (Inner City Press published documents here.)

The night of the verdict I asked UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres what he will do to clean up the UN, where he has left CEFC without any audit, still in consultative status with the UN. On his way from his Mercedes to a glitzy fundraiser including George and Amal Clooney, Guterres refused to answer. The next day when asked by another journalist why Guterres had refused to answer banned Inner City Press' question, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric claimed that the UN has “cooperated” with the prosecution. But the bribery group remains in the UN, unaudited.

Why has the case of US versus Ho, and now the guilty verdicts, garnered relatively so little interest, with the corruption of the UN exposed by it scarcely mentioned all? SG Guterres is hoping it goes away. In terms of corruption, he did not disclose and refuses to answer on the African business links of his son Pedro Guimarães e Melo De Oliveira Guterres. He refuses to answer how much he spends in public funds flying to his home in Lisbon at least sixteen times sofar as SG. 

   So CEFC remains an accredited non governmental organization with the UN's Economic and Social Council, while investigative Inner City Press for which I have been covering the case has been dis-accredited by and ousted from the UN, put on a list of those permanently banned without notice, due process or appeal. On December 7 I was informed I am banned from a “UN Human Rights” event on December 10 to be addressed by Guterres and his human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet. But this reporting will not stop - Guterres' corruption of the UN must be addressed, through oversight or as is discussed elsewhere, impeachment. From the lofty goals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to Guterres' censorship for corruption is UNacceptable.

  With UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and her Deputy Andrew Gilmour set to speak in the UN on human rights day on December 10, Inner City Press responded to an invitation and was told, "Thank you for registering to attend the Human Rights Day event at the United Nations on Monday 10 December. On Monday, please come to the UN Visitors’ Gate on First Avenue opposite 45th street starting at 2pm, at which time entry passes will be distributed." 

Then, past six p.m. on Friday, December 7 thisfrom Bachelet's and Gilmour's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: "Dear Matthew, We have received notification from UN Security that your name was flagged as "BARRED" on the list we submitted for passes for Monday's event (3pm, ECOSOC Chamber).We will therefore not have a pass for you and are unable to facilitate entry.
Thank you for your interest and best regards,
OHCHR New York Office." Photo of email here.

   Inner City Press immediately wrote back, to the sender and Bachelet and her assistant, to Andrew Gilmour and to the moderator of the event, "Particularly since you are the UN Office of the High Commissioner for *Human Rights,* did you not ask why a journalist who asks the Secretary General and his spokesmen about the killings in Cameroon, Burundi, UN corruption, UN peacekeepers' sexual abuse of civilians, and Sri Lanka, is “BARRED” from attending your human rights event - without any hearing or appeal? I will appreciate your Office's answer to this."  We'll have more on this.

 Bachelet gave a speech on October 15 in the UN's Third Committee, she emphasized a prioritization of social and economic rights and said one of the officials of her office is "on mission in Silicon Valley" in the US. There are questions about this - but Inner City Press which has covered human rights and the UN for more than a decade was for the first time banned from access a High Commissioner's speech. This has been raised repeated to Bachelet since she took office but she has so far done nothing, not even responded. Meanwhile on October 12 Cameroon, from whose Paul Biya Secretary General Antonio Guterres took a golden statue and favors in the Fifth (Budget) Committee and remains silent on the slaughter of Anglophones, was elected to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. This system is failing - but if Bachelet cannot even answer on Guterres maintaining a secret banned list including not only Inner City Press but also "political activists" - and anti-corruption campaigners - then the UN of Guterres has hit its newest low. 

At UN, Protection of Some Journalists, Silence on South Sudan, Burundi, UN Censorship Alliance

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 27, updated 7:40 pm -- At the UN there is much talk about the protection of journalists in conflict situations, and about freedom of the press. But when Inner City Press for the Free UN Coalition for Access on May 21 asked the UN about a journalist killed in South Sudan, where the UN has a mission, there was nothing. Nor in the week since: nothing.

 Likewise in Burundi, the statements of the UN Security Council and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have not mentioned journalists Bireha of Bonesha FM, wounded along with an opposition party leader and now reportedly in hiding like other journalists there, for example from Radio Publique Africaine.

  So the Security Council's May 27 event of the Protection of Journalists is, at best, incomplete: perhaps they mean, protection of SOME journalists. 

 Tellingly, UN correspondents from Reuters and Voice of America, both of whom tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, threw softball questions outside the Security Council - not on Burundi. Their UN Censorship Alliance, UNCA, is promoting its own side event at the same time of the Security Council's belated meeting on Burundi. The head of UNCA Giampaoli Pioli tried to get Inner City Press thrown out for its reporting on Sri Lanka.We'll have more on this, in these live reports:

Update: Mariane Pearl cited "mass surveillance by some UNSC members." Some wonder, why not just say, USA, NSA spying?

Update: Spain's Ignacio Ybfifiez said independent radio is off-air in Burundi. Later, US Ambassador Samantha Power also mentioned Burundi, quoting an unnamed journalist there; New Zealand's new Permanent Representative Gerard van Bohemen also cited Burundi. But why then wasn't Bonesha FM, RPA and others in UNSC's statements? If attempts to include were blocked, why not speak out on it as on some other issues?

Update: Pakistan's Ambassador Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, herself a former journalist, said that embedded reporters raise questions about impartiality. 

Update: Australia's Gillian Bird, to her credit, cited the killing of Radio Tamazuj's Pow James Raeth, on which UNMISS and the UN said nothing, despite questions from Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access.

Update of 7:40 pm -- there were fewer rights of reply than expected. 

The first was Iran, firing back at Israel for “defamation,” calling it a “pro-apartheid occupier."

(Meanwhile, UN third floor with entrance to UNSC gallery was by then locked. #FreeMedia indeed. FUNCA objected.)

The second reply was by Jordan, to Syria's “unsuccessful attempts to distract attention from regime."

The third reply was by Russia to Ukraine, which it called a leader in killing of journalists, six in 2014.

In sur-reply there was Israel to Iran, which it called “absurd,” calling the UNSC that “appropriate forum” for this “disturbing reality. Ukraine's spokesperson told Russia “don't waste your time, resolve problems in your own country." Then Lithuania's Permanent Representative gaveled it shut.

  "Do you call that a jab?" one of the repliers asked Inner City Press. Well, it passes for one at the UN.

 From the UN's May 21 transcript:

Inner City Press / FUNCA: In South Sudan, a journalist of Radio Tamazuj, Pow James Raeth, is reported to have been killed by gunfire in Akobo.  And I wanted to know whether UNMISS, which I believe still has a facility in Akobo, is aware of it, if they have any comment on it, and what they think is behind the killing of this journalist.

Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq:  We'll have to check with UNMISS whatever details there are of that incident. 

  Seven hours later, there was no answer. Nor six days later. The day before, on May 20, Inner City Press for FUNCA asked about Burkina Faso:

Inner City Press / FUNCA: Burkina Faso has announced that it's banning live political broadcasts for three months in the run-up to elections, and a number of press organizations have been critical of it.  Given DPA (Department of Political Affairs) and the UN's kind of involvement in different stages in Burkina Faso, do you have any view of that banning of live political broadcasts?

Deputy Spokesman Haq:  I don't know whether it's a banning or whether it's restrictions.  There are a number of countries that restrict political broadcasts in the run-up to elections, and sometimes that's designed to lessen the threat of electoral violence, so that's a more complicated issue.  So at this stage, we wouldn't have anything to say about that.  If there are concerns about actual harassment of journalists, that would be a case for concern.

 What about the killing of a journalist in South Sudan? Now the UN Security Council under its Lithuania presidency has a meeting on the protection of journalists, and we are here. But we will not go to the RSF side event with Christophe Deloire held in the clubhouse of UNCA, which typically did not ask about the journalist killing in South Sudan or censorship in Burkina Faso. In fact, UNCA board members tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, for its reporting, becoming the UN Censorship Alliance.

Many organizations like to "launch" their reports at or in the United Nations, and so ask few questions about UN. The Committee to Protect Journalists did one earlier this year.

  Tellingly, while CPJ spoke out against the censorship in Burkina Faso, it has said nothing about the UN's defense of it. What is the likelihood of Burkina reversing itself, when it now has UN endorsement?

 On February 14, 2013, Inner City Press asked CPJ about the UN Correspondents Association's board members trying to censor its reporting about Sri Lanka and trying to get its UN accreditation "reviewed."

 The CPJ response was no comment on the "internal dynamics of the UN's accreditation process," saying its focus is "international press freedom issues." Isn't censorship at the UN international?

  Now it gets worse - the above quoted Q&A was at least in the open UN Press Briefing Room. Now CPJ intends to take its report launch behind closed doors in clubhouse the UN gives UN, its UN Censorship Alliance, publicized only to those who pay UNCA money. 

  The new Free UN Coalition for Access challenges all this - and CPJ's corporate and selective advocacy for only some journalism. It is a tuxedo approach such as on display in DC.

   Back on February 14, 2013 when CPJ came to the UN Press Briefing Room to “launch” its annual report on press freedom Inner City Press asked them, not for the first time, about the UN's own treatment of the full range of journalists, their right to access the UN and to due process if challenged. Video here, from Minute 29:12.

  As example, Inner City Press noted the UN limiting accreditation by geography and to those who abide by the “principles of the Organization,” and total lack of due process rules for journalists on complaints as those filed against Inner City Press in 2012 by Voice of America,Reuters' Louis Charbonneau and the “UN Correspondents Association” for which he spoke on Thursday. Video here, from Minute 12:04.

  Rob Mahoney of CJP, who had begun the press conference by saying “we look to the UN” on these issues, declined to comment on the "internal dynamics of the UN's accreditation process," saying he doesn't know enough about it since he focuses on "international press freedom issues." Video here, from Minute 30:40.

  But aren't unfair rules of the UN worldwide in denying access to journalists "international press freedom issues"? And how can you "look to the UN" to help if you don't first look AT the UN?

  While Charbonneau's UNCA in mid-2012 initiated a process against Inner City Press citing an article it wrote about Sri Lanka (and UNCA, see here), Inner City Press received death threats from supporters of the Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka.

  Inner City Press asked UNCA to stop or at least suspend its process; this was refused, including by Charbonneau, who told Inner City Press to “go to the NYPD.”

Remembering CPJ's Bob Dietz' focus on Sri Lanka, Inner City Press wrote to him and CPJ's Joel Simon. The response came from CPJ's Americas Research Associate Sara Rafsky:

“Thank you very much for alerting us about your situation. At the moment, the Americas program is swamped with urgent cases... Thus it will most likely be some time before I can look into your case.”

  These was no follow up by CPJ. The New York Civil Liberties a month later, citing the complaint against Inner City Press, asked the UN to state its due process rules, which the UN has yet to do.

   The  Free UN Coalition for Access, on behalf of which Inner City Press thanked Mahoney and his largely silent panel for coming, is pursuing changes to the UN's archaic and exclusionary accreditation rules and Media Access Guidelines.

   UNCA's, and Charbonneau's, response was to tear down flyers on the topic. Atop UNCA again is Giampaolo Pioli the past president who, after renting one of his apartments to Palitha Kohona, later granted Kohona's request as Sri Lanka's ambassador to screen that government's war crimes denial film "Lies Agreed To" inside the UN, under the UNCA banner. Inner City Press reported on it, was told to remove the article from the Internet or face expulsion from the UN. That is censorship, and CPJ was informed: but partners with UNCA. This is not press freedom.

   Then on February 12, 2014  when CPJ its "Attacks on the Press" report online, under the heading Africa there were pages on Tanzania and Swaziland, for example, but none on South Sudan or Mali.

  CPJ's Joel Simon began the February 12, 2014 "launch" press conference by explaining why it was held at the United Nations (he cited countries trying to use the UN to control the Internet). Inner City Press when called on asked if CPJ thinks the UN Peacekeeping missions in South Sudan and Mali do enough to combat crackdowns on the press there, for example the Salva Kiir government seizing a complete issue of the Juba Monitor, and theats against MaliActu.. 

 Now we wonder, including on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access, what CPJ thinks of the UN bureau chief of Reuters, with essentially a permanent seat on UNCA board, mis-using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to get Google to block access to a leaked anti-Press complaint to the UN from its search. Isn't that censorship? 

CPJ & Reuters current and former, Feb 14, 2013 (c) MRLee

   The problem here is that groups like CPJ like to use the UN to “launch” their reports. Mahoney joked with two separate Reuters reporters: click here, here and here for three (of many) documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reflecting Reuters and the UN.

Reuter's Charbonneau shakes with Ban: on what? (c) Luiz Rampelloto

  CPJ or at least Mahoney seem to assume that Big Media like Reuters (and Agence France Presse, click here) can do no wrong. But that is not the case. Watch this site.

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