New UN Spokesperson Dujarric Spins Even Staff Union Protests, Stonewalls on Haiti Cholera, Silent on Sri Lanka: New Era II

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 11 -- While the UN continues to  preach transparency, democracy and even lack of censorship around the world, in two elections held in December inside the UN, disputes and decay were the rule, and have grown ever worse since.

  Now on March 11, when Staff Union members protested in the lobby and right outside the press briefing room, new UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric tried to put his own headline on the protest.

  He said it was only about the Publishing Section -- which Inner City Press has covered since the UN used Hurricane Sandy as an excuse to eliminate jobs -- but the problems under Ban run much deeper.

  Dujarric ignored that it was the Staff Union ticket who won the most votes in December but are still UNrecognized by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's administration which organized the protest, which Inner City Press wrote about earlier this morning before it happened.

  Dujarric on March 10 called the continued pay at the Under Secretary General level for Augustine Mahiga a short stint, closely aligned with a board of correspondents who clapped for him, and for Ban Ki-moon. It's a new low, and one in which the Free UN Coalition for Access will not participate.Last video here.

  On March 11, Dujarric dodged on a new Haiti cholera case filed in Federal Court in Brooklyn; he talked about "protection of minorities" being upfront. But on March 10 he said he hadn't watched the brutal footage of Tamils being killed by the Sri Lankan Army; there has still been no comment by the Secretariat.

  Back on February 11, despite a Staff Union election have been conducted including in the UN Lobby in December, since Ban's Secretariat has not recognized the winners a call for new Polling Officers went out. This despite a meeting earlier that day at which the caller did not disclose this course of action. The next day, UN Security had to be called to try to put down the dispute.

  Also on February 11, having moved to break the UN staff union by citing alleged irregularities in voting, the UN Secretariat held a closed door meeting with Permanent Representative on Ban Ki-moon's "mobility" proposal, which the union opposed. The meeting was not in the day's UN Journal, and was not on UNTV. 

  Then as noted Ban Ki-moon held a lunch and "secret" question and answer session, with no question about Ukraineand the UN's derivative role, with what's become the UN's Censorship Alliance, despite its leadership openly violating the group's own constitution, which they recently put back online, by not having the required financial meeting in the first half of January, as promised in an email disclosing a donated Samsung television subsequently denied by UNCA 2013-14 president Pam Falk of CBS.

   Nor has the Ukraine-less Q&A at this lunch been disclosed to the wider press corps or public, despite a formal request from the Free UN Coalition for Access:

a tape or transcript of what the Secretary General said today this lunch: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BgOCAllCUAAwTxU.jpgSince the photo shows tape recorders, this is a request to be informed if any embargo was placed on what the Secretary General said. If not, this is a request including on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access for an explanation, why this was not provided to all correspondents, and for the tape (or transcript) forthwith.

  What Nesirky's office did after that was to email out Ban's prepared remarks, with no question and answer, much less what is understood as his comments on crimes against humanity. (Since Ban was silent at the time on those in Sri Lanka, some ask, is it any wonder? Click here for UNCA's "leadership" on Sri Lanka.)

   How can the UN cite rules against one group, the union, while ignoring them on another? The answer is that the union fights or pushes to hold Ban accountable, while the UNCA leadership does not. So one is broken, the other lunched with.

  Most telling are direct censorship efforts by Louis Charbonneau the UN bureau chief of Reuters, with its Permanent seat on UNCA's board. He got Google to ban from its Search a complaint he filed with the UN trying to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, (mis) using the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act as diagnosed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That's straight up censorship, and it's enough, well, to lose your lunch. But not today, apparently.

  More contrast: in the UN Staff Union election, in which an incumbent sought to stay on despite term limits, there werecharges of illegal polling, and an attempt to stop paying the Elections Services Company.

   Now, the ticket that came out on top in the election has written to UN Department of Management chief Yukio Takasu for a statement if he and the UN recognize this union leadership.

   Takasu presided over a Department of Management town hall meeting at which impacts on staff members were discussed -- but without a recognized union?

   Inner City Press is informed that in the UN facility in Valencia, for example, contract workers will re obtained through the UN Office for Project Services. Union-busting and outsourcing, at the UN.

  On December 17 Inner City Press published the results,putting the document online here:

Winner with 430 votes: Ticket 1 [They have thanked voters]

President Stephen Kisambira (DESA/PD)

First Vice-President Emad Hassanin (DGACM/MPD/PS)

Second Vice-President Leonid Dolgopolov (DSS/DSSS/SSS)

2d place with 231 votes: Ticket 2

President Nadir A. Dirar Bashir (DGACM/MPD/PS/DTPU)...

  We will continue to cover that showdown, which is at least competitive. Even more decayed is the United Nations Correspondents Association or UN's Censorship Alliance. 

  To compare: while the UN uses a dispute about the legality of the December election to refuse to recognize those who came out on top in the union election, the fact the UNCA has again violated its own Constitution, only today put back online, by not holding a meeting about its finance in the first half of January is ignored by the UN. Because UNCA serves this UN.

   It's simple: the UNCA Constitution Article 7, 1, states "The Association shall convene an annual Membership Meeting during the first half of the month of January."

  This didn't happen; instead, 2013-14 president Pamela Falk of CBS distributed November 25 minutes, which also directly referred to a donated Samsung television which UNCA later denied, stating as to the Constitution that

"It was noted that the meeting was a General Meeting, not the Annual General Meeting. The UNCA constitution requires an Annual General meeting that should be held in the first half of January; the date was set for January 14th. There was discussion and a vote for a meeting on December 5, but because the budget will not be completed until year's end, the meeting will be held, as the Constitution requires in January."

   Despite this acknowledgment of the requirements of the UNCA Constitution, the meeting was not held in the first half of January, or even in January at all.

  A Constitutionally-invalid meeting was finally held -- largely about, what else, another party, like the one held March 7 even as the Security Council meeting on children and armed conflict continued.

 Reporting on the Security Council is undermine by UNCA's laxity: there are fewer and fewer UNTV stakeouts, as potential speakers are diverted to private chats in the so-called Turkish Lounge. This happened on February 10, while the "new" UNCA fed quotes from French president Hollande's state dinner in Washington.

    Ban's UN hands the first question and more to UNCA, which does not challenge Ban. In 2012 its leaders tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, pointing at a factual article Inner City Press published about Sri Lanka, the UN and conflicts of interest.

  Ban's Secretariat now admits on Sri Lanka a "systemic failure" - his Deputy Jan Eliasson repeatedly says that -- but UNCA, which still has no rules against trying to throw journalists out of the UN, nor apparently any conflict of interest rules, makes no admission, no reforms.

  It demands the first question at press conferences even if it has nothing to ask, or the answers will never be published.

  Not surprisingly it is in decay. ng a 2009 trip to Sri Lanka with Ban Ki-moon and UK humanitarian chief Sir John Holmes not only didn't report Holmes on the record comment that he deleted all complaining emails from Tamils -- she said the Press reporting this "ruined" relations with Holmes for her and, for example, Reuters. Though over 2000 journalists are accredited at the UN, in December 2013 only 111 even tried to vote in the three days of polling -- and door to door demands to vote for -- the United Nations Correspondents Association. Seven of these ballots failed. The incumbent Pamela Falk of CBS, running unopposed, still managed to not get 26 of the 104 votes cast.

  But as a result of UNCA's "Ball" with Ban, she got herfashion photo in the NYT Styles section and made sure to hype it up, online and in the briefing room before being handed, only to waste, the first of four questions on the South Sudan crisis on December 23.

  Falk's vote total of 78 was lower than the 85 obtained in December 2011 by her predecessor, who was the one who first demanded that Inner City Press remove an article about Sri Lanka from the Internet, click here for that.

 The article UNCA "leaders" tries to censor reported on the previous financial relationship of Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative with UNCA's then president, in the context of this president screening in the UN the Sri Lankan government's war crimes denial film, without asking or the consent of Inner City Press then on the Executive Committee of UNCA.

  No reforms in UNCA were ever instituted after this.

 Inner City Press after withstanding a kangaroo court UNCA proceeding quit the organization and co-founded the newFree UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info, to actually defend the right of free press and free inquiry in and about the UN system.

    In 2012 UNCA "leaders" tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, as documented by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Voice of America asked the UN to "review" Inner City Press' accreditation; VOA said it had the support of Agence France Presse and Reuters, click here for that.

The Reuters first vice president of UNCA spied for the UN, giving them an internal anti Press UNCA document three minutes after promising not to (story here, document here,audio here). 

 While he has stepped off, the Reuters reporter he supervised (and who also tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN) campaigned to get on UNCA's board, demanded on camera in a UN noon briefing to all present, "Have you voted?" It's as if Reuters has a Permanent seat on UNCA's 15-member Executive Committee, like the P5 in the Security Council.

Here are the December 2013 results, compared to votes in December 2011 for the "candidate" or their predecessor

Dec '13 Dec '11

Prez: * 78 [85] Pamela Falk, CBS News TV and Radio

1st VP * 74 [79] Kahraman Haliscelik, TRT Turkish Radio & TV

2d VP * 48 71 Masood Haider, Dawn, Pakistan

* 48 [71] Sylviane Zehil, L’Orient Le Jour

3d VP * 55 [62] Erol Avdovic, Webpublicapress

38 Ali Barada, An-Nahar/France 24

Trez * 81 [71] Bouchra Benyoussef, Maghreb Arab Press

Sect * 79 [81] Seana Magee, Kyodo News

Members at Large:

* 57 1. Nabil Abi Saab , Alhurra TV

* 57 2. Talal Al-Haj ,Al-Arabiya News channel

22 3. George Baumgarten , Jewish Newspapers, Nation Media

* 50 4. Sherwin Bryce-Pease, South African Broadcasting (SABC)

* 51 5. Zhenqiu Gu, Xinhua News Agency

* 69 6. Melissa Kent, CBC/Radio Canada

* 56 7. Evelyn Leopold, Huffington Post Contributor

49 8. J. Tuyet Nguyen, German Press Agency DPA

* 67 9. Michelle Nichols, Reuters

41 10. Edwin Nwanchukwu, News Agency of Nigeria

27 11. Cia Pak, Scannews

*54 12. Valeria Robecco, ANSA

* 54 13. Sangwon Yoon , Bloomberg

  Some of the elected are new and their positions on UNCA Executive Committee members trying to get other (investigative) media thrown out of the UN, and the need to preclude this and UNCA leaders' anonymous social media trolling, are not yet known. (Some not elected were among the better / more diverse candidates.)

When the UN Correspondents Association leaders tried stealthy to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, and have failed to institute any reform since, it became the UN's Censorship Alliance. Party on. Watch this site.

   

Exclusive: UN Letters of Lay-Off Handed Out Today, Dated Dec 31, Wiring in Scribes' Club: FUNCA's Banifesto

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, January 6 -- While the UN preaches labor rights, democracy and even lack of censorship around the world, in two elections held last month inside the UN, disputes and decay were the rule.

  And on January 6, 2014, UN staff members were summoned to a meeting, they felt sure -- correctly -- to  receive layoff notices such as those officers in the UN Department of Safety & Security received on December 1, 2013. Click here and here for that Inner City Press exclusive story; here is the e-mail send to Publishing Section staff about January 6, exclusively published here:

Dear Colleagues,

Kindly come to my Office at 11:15 a.m. on Monday, 6 January 2013 for a brief meeting with me and the Director. The agenda would be:

I - As you know, amongst other items, the 68th General Assembly passed the budget for biennium 2014-15. I therefore, in my capacity as OIC, have to hand you an official letter signed by the Executive Officer of DGACM.

II - Newly posted Job Openings in Inspira for Department for General Assembly and Conference Management, NEW YORK.

Thank you and see you on Monday.

  Inner City Press has seen the letter(s) handed out -- they refer to "notice of termination" and "separation from service." This and "have to hand you an official letter" seemed at odds with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's smiling visit to his Spokesperson's office later on January 6. He told Inner City Press, see you on Friday - is that a visit of the press floor, or Q&A?  

  In terms of fight-back, in the UN Staff Union election in December, in which an incumbent sought to stay on despite term limits, there were charges of illegal polling, and an attempt to stop paying the Elections Services Company.

  Now the incumbent - no longer in power - has implicitly asked the UN Secretariat to take back the Staff Union office, see below.

  When the results came out, and were posted on the UN's i-Seek intranet site, the losing ticket wrote December 20 that it intended to simply take over the Staff Union office. 

  Back on December 20, Inner City Press asked the UN's acting deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq:

Inner City Press: On the staff union election that just took place, given that it’s budget crunch time, according to the Secretariat, who is its interlocutor? Who is the head of the staff union, the previous incumbent or the team that was announced as the winner on iSeek?

Acting Deputy Spokesperson Haq: Regarding the staff representatives, it’s ultimately up to them members of the staff to determine who their leadership is. It would not, you know, I don’t think it’s appropriate for this Office to intervene in their affairs.

Inner City Press: So, who do you speak to now? If you had to talk to the staff union, which of the two would you call?

Acting Deputy Spokesperson Haq: They will have, like I said, they’ll have to resolve it. I’m not going to say anything prejudicial to their process, nor do I think that they would appreciate that.

Then the losing ticket said it would just occupy the (UN given) office on January 6. So the now out of power incumbent wrote on the UN snow day on January 3, hoping that

"our Administration colleagues decide to fully dirty their hands and mandate in writing that the Union premises are vacated (it hasn't happened yet and I am not sure if it will since the 44th Staff Council authorized and paid in advance for a legal case to be brought to UNDT and such an action by the Administration would be the legal icing on the cake)."

  On December 17 Inner City Press published the results,putting the document online here:

Winner with 430 votes: Ticket 1 [They have thanked voters]

President Stephen Kisambira (DESA/PD)

First Vice-President Emad Hassanin (DGACM/MPD/PS)

Second Vice-President Leonid Dolgopolov (DSS/DSSS/SSS)

2d place with 231 votes: Ticket 2

President Nadir A. Dirar Bashir (DGACM/MPD/PS/DTPU)...

  We will cover that showdown, which is at least competitive. Even more decayed is the UN's Censorship Alliance, which while not even asking the UN to hold a briefing or answer questions about the crisis in South Sudan, re-emerged on December 22 through once and future president Pamela Falk of CBS hyping fashion photographs of herself with Ban Ki-moon.
 
  The "premises" the UN gives them saw the installation of wiring by the UN on December 31, even as Falk on January 2 used the UN noon briefing to deny ever accepting a donated Samsung TV through the South Korea mission and the UN,despite her own November 25 minutes, and the UN's December 10 answer to Inner City Press. See the 2014 "Banifesto" of the new Free UN Coalition for Access,@FUNCA_info, here.

   Technically they're called the United Nations Correspondents Association, and in 2012 its leaders tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, pointing at a factual article Inner City Press published about Sri Lanka, the UN and conflicts of interest.

  Ban's Secretariat now admits on Sri Lanka a "systemic failure" - his Deputy Jan Eliasson repeatedly says that -- but UNCA, which still has no rules against trying to throw journalists out of the UN, nor apparently any conflict of interest rules, makes no admission, no reforms.

  It demands the first question at press conferences even if it has nothing to ask, or the answers will never be published.

  Not surprisingly it is in decay. Even as to its annual overly expensive ball, its draw Richard Roth of CNN was replaced by BBC's Laura Trevelyanwho during a 2009 trip to Sri Lanka with Ban Ki-moon and UK humanitarian chief Sir John Holmes not only didn't report Holmes on the record comment that he deleted all complaining emails from Tamils -- she said the Press reporting this "ruined" relations with Holmes for her and, for example, Reuters. 

 Though over 2000 journalists are accredited at the UN, in December 2013 only 111 even tried to vote in the three days of polling -- and door to door demands to vote for -- the United Nations Correspondents Association. Seven of these ballots failed. The incumbent Pamela Falk of CBS, running unopposed, still managed to not get 26 of the 104 votes cast.

  But as a result of UNCA's "Ball" with Ban, she got her fashion photo in the NYT Styles section and made sure to hype it up, online and in the briefing room before being handed, only to waste, the first of four questions on the South Sudan crisis on December 23.

  Falk's vote total of 78 was lower than the 85 obtained in December 2011 by her predecessor, who was the one who first demanded that Inner City Press remove an article about Sri Lanka from the Internet, click here for that.

 The article UNCA "leaders" tries to censor reported on the previous financial relationship of Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative with UNCA's then president, in the context of this president screening in the UN the Sri Lankan government's war crimes denial film, without asking or the consent of Inner City Press then on the Executive Committee of UNCA.

  No reforms in UNCA were ever instituted after this.

  Now as Inner City Press exclusively reported on December 16, picked up in Sri Lanka in English and Tamil, Sri Lanka's defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was in New York. Some in Sri Lanka hasked: would he attend UNCA's $250 a plate event with Ban Ki-moon?

 Will the leaders of UNCA, an association of correspondents, make public who attended their ball, who paid and how much?

(Inner City Press after withstanding a kangaroo court UNCA proceeding quit the organization and co-founded the new Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info, to actually defend the right of free press and free inquiry in and about the UN system.)

   UNCA is an organization in continued decline. In 2012 many of its "leaders" tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, as documented by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Voice of America asked the UN to "review" Inner City Press' accreditation; VOA said it had the support of Agence France Presse and Reuters, click here for that.

The Reuters first vice president of UNCA spied for the UN, giving them an internal anti Press UNCA document three minutes after promising not to (story here, document here,audio here). 

 While he has stepped off, the Reuters reporter he supervised (and who also tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN) campaigned to get on UNCA's board, demanding in Friday's noon briefing to all present, "Have you voted?" It's as if Reuters has a Permanent seat on UNCA's 15-member Executive Committee, like the P5 in the Security Council.

Here are the December 2013 results, compared to votes in December 2011 for the "candidate" or their predecessor

Dec '13 Dec '11

Prez: * 78 [85] Pamela Falk, CBS News TV and Radio

1st VP * 74 [79] Kahraman Haliscelik, TRT Turkish Radio & TV

2d VP * 48 71 Masood Haider, Dawn, Pakistan

* 48 [71] Sylviane Zehil, L’Orient Le Jour

3d VP * 55 [62] Erol Avdovic, Webpublicapress

38 Ali Barada, An-Nahar/France 24

Trez * 81 [71] Bouchra Benyoussef, Maghreb Arab Press

Sect * 79 [81] Seana Magee, Kyodo News

Members at Large:

* 57 1. Nabil Abi Saab , Alhurra TV

* 57 2. Talal Al-Haj ,Al-Arabiya News channel

22 3. George Baumgarten , Jewish Newspapers, Nation Media

* 50 4. Sherwin Bryce-Pease, South African Broadcasting (SABC)

* 51 5. Zhenqiu Gu, Xinhua News Agency

* 69 6. Melissa Kent, CBC/Radio Canada

* 56 7. Evelyn Leopold, Huffington Post Contributor

49 8. J. Tuyet Nguyen, German Press Agency DPA

* 67 9. Michelle Nichols, Reuters

41 10. Edwin Nwanchukwu, News Agency of Nigeria

27 11. Cia Pak, Scannews

*54 12. Valeria Robecco, ANSA

* 54 13. Sangwon Yoon , Bloomberg

  Some of the elected are new and their positions on UNCA Executive Committee members trying to get other (investigative) media thrown out of the UN, and the need to preclude this and UNCA leaders' anonymous social media trolling, are not yet known. (Some not elected were among the better / more diverse candidates.)

 They honored Ban Ki-moon, whose spokesperson's office squawked on December 13, immediately after a briefing on Syria chemical weapons, that wine would be served in the UNCA room and that election results were out: to UN, newsworthy.

When the UN Correspondents Association leaders tried stealthy to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, and have failed to institute any reform since, it became the UN's Censorship Alliance. Party on. Watch this site.

   

Exclusive: At UN, As Ban Ki-moon's Five Year Rule Is Violated at ESCAP in Bangkok, Ladsous Wants to Push Haq There, UNreformed

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, October 7 -- There should be no more than five years at any one UN position, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced.

  But Inner City Press notes, for example, that the head of the Bangkok-based Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Noeleen Heyzer of Singapore, has been in place more than SIX years now. She was put into the position in August 2007, and it is now October 2013.

  But there's more to this than just another example of the UN not living up to its stated principles, as with its Human Rights Due Diligence Policy with continued aid to the two Congolese Army units implicated in the 135 rapes in Minova in November 2012.

Inner City Press is not the only one who noticed that Heyzer's Under Secretary General position at ESCAP could be freed up. 

  Well placed sources exclusively tell Inner City Press that the head of UN Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row to hold THAT position, wants to push out his co-equal Under Secretary General for the Department of Field Support, Ameerah Haq.

  While an earlier Ban Ki-moon reform involved splitting Peacekeeping into two separate components, DPKO and DFS, now Ladsous wants to dominate both of them, by pushing Haq out of DFS and installing a person of his own choosing. (More on that in a future story.)

  Singapore is a serious UN country, so another USG post would have to be identified and given to Heyzer or another Singaporean. But Ladsous, or better said France, has this kind of control in the UN system.

  Beyond this abuse of Ban's supposed five year rule, it brings up the need for a more meaningful reform: no COUNTRY should be able to control a UN department for more than five years. France has held onto Peacekeeping, even since demanding it in exchange for not vetoing Kofi Annan becoming Secretary General. Here they are:

Secrétaires généraux adjoints des Nations Unis aux Opérations de Maintien de la Paix :

Kofi Annan : de mars 1993 à décembre 1996

Bernard Miyet : de janvier 1997 à octobre 2000

Jean-Marie Guéhenno : d'octobre 2000 à juillet 2008

Alain Le Roy : du 30 juin 2008 au 2 septembre 2011

Hervé Ladsous : à compter du 2 septembre 2011

This is UNacceptable: over 16 years, 9 months. It should end.

  At the other end of the UN spectrum, it's every UN department for itself. The Publishing Unit faces a zeroing out of jobs, from 150 position not long ago. To save some posts, in order to scan old documents in the basement of the UN library, sources exclusively tell Inner City Press that the UN is turning to its new Daddy Warbucks: Qatar.

  Warbucks because while the UN pleads for Qatar's money, that country's royal family funds war in Syria. But the UN says nothing. At least, then, the UN should create a bidding war to save more staffers' jobs. We are against lay-offs, but also against the UN becoming beholden to particular states, creating under Ban Ki-moon a UN "a la carte," to use another French phrase like faux (but not Pho).

  Meanwhile in the Department of Safety and Security, more security has been gained, commitments from acting Under Secretary General Kevin Kennedy. This emerged at the best "End of General Debate" party of the season, under the (broken) satellite dish over the East River Friday night. Compared to the faux ceremony of the UN Correspondents Association Executive Committee, which after spying for the UN through its first vice president had to beg interns to come via a rare flyer, DSS had steak and an open bar and plenty of good vibes.

  UNCA is given its clubhouse, in which it held a faux UN briefing by Gulf-supported Syria rebel boos Jarba (a/k/a Jarbucks), by the UN Department of Public Information, regarding which we have received a detailed recruitment complaint, regarding which we have publicly requested an explanation. The new Free UN Coalition for Access holds, if the explanation makes sense, it's fine. But to not respond, or to only selectively respond, is not. More on this to follow. Watch this site.