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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR Letter PFT Q&A

UNITED NATIONS GATE, November 21 –When "Addressing Contemporary Protection Challenges in Complex Crises" was presented across First Avenue from the UN by UNHCR's Volker Turk on November 2, Inner City Press went, to ask two questions. Video here. It asked Turk, who it knew had toured refugee camps of Burundians in Tanzania, if the UN really thinks it's safe for these Burundians to return, as Tanzania tries to pressure them to leave. Turk emphasized that some want to return, to some unnamed farming communities, and it is UNHRC's job to help. Sure. But what about the pressure from Tanzania and indirectly Nkurunziza? Now in the run up to the UN Security Council's Thanksgiving Eve session on Burundi, we can report that Burundi was the first, and seemingly only, country to recognize Sri Lanka's coup government of "prime minister" Mahinda Rajapaksa, widely linked to war crimes. It was during a visit to Sri Lanka in late October by Nkurunziza's Vice President Gaston Sindimwo. Birds of a feather... Back on November 2 as with a question about Libya, Turk largely dodged. It was Antonio Guterres, we note, who politicized UNHCR including as part of his campaign for Secretary General. But we remain grateful to the host. Previously there Inner City Press asked UN Peacekeeping official Thomas Kontogeorgos what the UN has done about its negligent loss of weapons and ammunition - which Inner City Press asked about IN the UN before being banned as cover up by SG Antonio Guterres and his USG Alison Smale. Kontogeorgos to his credit answered, only somewhat evasively, that DPKO "provided inputs" to the Small Arms Survey, and now UNPOL passes information to INTERPOL (the disappearance of whose head Guterres has said nothing about, despite written questions from Inner City Press.). At the end of the IPI program, Youssef Mahmoud spoke about the elephant(s) in the room, selling arms. Afterward Dr. Mihaela Racovita of SAS told Inner City Press they are trying to make further inroads with DPKO, for example with the mission in Mali. We hope to have more on this - the lawless ban by Guterres and Smale, for reporting on UN corruption, is not helpful. But we will not stop. Back on September 5, hours after in the UN Security Council chamber UK Ambassador Karen Pierce said she supported the morning's meeting about Nicaragua due to refugee flows, across the street from the UN Inner City Press asked her why this logic didn't apply to the confict in the former British Southern Cameroons and the flight of Anglophones from state violence into Nigeria. Periscope video here.

     Pierce replied that a country is less likely to end up on the Security Council's agenda if it is taking some positive steps. But given 36 year Cameroonian head of state Paul Biya's torching of villages, what are his positive steps? A sceptic might point to the natural gas deal he signed with UK-based New Age, which UK Minister Liam Fox bragged around as showing UK companies can still get deals after Brexit.

   Also on the panel on the "Culture of Peace," moderated by Kevin Rudd, was Secretary General Antonio Guterres' head of policy planning Fabrizio Hochschild. When Inner City Press began a question to Hochschild, who had spoken with gruesome examples from Colombia of the need for opposing sides to humanize each other though “dignification,” Rudd cut it off.

Stepping off the crowded elevator at ground level Inner City Press endeavored to ask Hochschild the questions, both Cameroon and whether Guterres and his opaque Global Communicator Alison Smale, purporting to ban Inner City Press from the UN for life without once speaking with it, should engaged in some dignification. He declined to answer -- declined to dignify the question, so to speak -- then said “Ask Steph.”

It was a reference to Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who Smale has twice written would answer Inner City Press' question but who has refused to for a full week.

  This as Inner City Press, already banned from the UN for 64 days amid its questions on Guterres' inaction on Cameroon with the country's ambassador Tommo Monthe heading the UN Budget Committee, has an application pending to cover the UN General Assembly as it has for the past 11 years. Dignification, indeed. We'll have more on this.

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