In
UN China Now Heads Security
Council and Will Take Members
to Beijing As Inner City Press
Asks IMF
By Matthew
Russell Lee, CJR Letter
PFT Q&A
UNITED NATIONS,
November 1 –
When the Security Council
President for October, Chinese
Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu, held a Press-less
press conference on November
1, he announced that the
Council members are being
invited to China, to visit the
stand-by peacekeeping force
base near Beijing and make
other stops. Here
is the Program of Work, via
the Free
UN Coalition for Access.
The questions were largely
softballs, which is how they
like it at the UN. He was
asked if there would be a
meeting in November about
Venezuela and started to say
he hopes not - then said he
thinks not, it is not on the
agenda. Earlier on November 1,
Inner City Press still banned
from the UN without any due
process or appeal got
questions answered by the
International Monetary Fund
which it covers, on Yemen
and Sri
Lanka. At the IMF
briefing, spokesman Gerry Rice
was asked about US sanctions
on Venezuela gold sales. In
New York, Ambassador Ma
reiterated that China is
against all unilateral
sanctions. So what will the
Council be doing when the new
US sanctions on Iran kick in?
Watch this site - we continue
the UN as actively as anyone.
Last month Bolivia's
Ambassador Llorenti talked up
his upcoming field trip to DR
Congo, like the Security
Council visit he led to Haiti,
which Inner City Press went on
and reported from. But now
that Guterres for his own
reasons has had Inner City
Press roughed up and banned
since July 3, Llorenti's
Mission has yet to respond to
this, regarding (now) October
11: "find myself banned from
even entering the UN, since 3
July 2018 when I was
physically ousted while
staking out the Fifth
Committee meeting from the
Vienna Cafe area, at the
invitation of member states on
the Committee. I would like to
request that you / your
Mission ensure that I can
enter the UN to cover and
hopefully ask a question at
your Program of Work press
conference tomorrow, and after
that to cover / stakeout such
meetings at the October 11
consultations on Western
Sahara / MINURSO, which is
almost impossible to cover
without being in the building.
As you may know, there are
numerous Morocco state media
given office space and
resident correspondent status
by DPI under USG Alison Smale,
who has refused to answer a
single one of my 10 e-mails.
They will cover the Western
Sahara meeting, from their
perspective. I believe I have
a similar right to continue
this issue.
Responsible are Chef de
Cabinet Viotti (who was called
by the Reporters Committee on
Freedom of the Press) and/or
DSG Amina Mohammed. Or,
pending that, please have the
Mission bring me in to these
meetings. The only written
communication I have received
from the UN is this letter
from USG Smale, here."
We'll have more on this,
(well) before October
11. Back on September 4
when US Ambassador Nikki Haley
held a press conference about
her Security Council
residency, her second, of the
14 questions called on by the
US Mission to the UN not one
was about anything in Africa
or even about UN reform. This
happened as 60% of the UN's
work is in Africa, the UN is
caught up in sexual abuse and
harassment scandals and while
Inner City Press, which covers
UN abuse and has uncovered
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres' inaction in Cameroon
and the African business
links of his son Pedro
Guimarães e Melo De Oliveira
Guterres has been banned
from the UN for 63 days by
Guterres, prospectively to
miss access to the General
Assembly High Level week for
the first time in 11 years.
When Inner City
Press was roughed up while it
covered the UN Budget
Committee and a plan by
Guterres to move jobs
including from New York to
Mexico City, it was covered by
Fox News which one assumes the
US Mission reads. Inner City
Press did not reach out for
any assistance from the
Mission, holding to the
principle that the UN should
treat journalists fairly
without a state sponsor.
Nothing improved.
In fact, Guterres' British
head of Global Communications
Alison Smale issued a letter
banning Inner City Press,
dredging up old discredited
complaints from Morocco and
her bitter deputy. Still,
nothing from Haley or the US
Mission.
Finally on August
24, after Inner City Press
learned from a non-US source
of President Trump's plan for
a meeting about drugs on
September 24, Inner City Press
formally raised the matter to
Haley's spokesman, a holdover
from the Samantha Power days,
John Degory. He indicated he
heard what was said.
But
access was not arranged to
Haley's September 4 press
conference, at which after
Haley to her credit at least
raised South Sudan in her
opening remarks Degory tried
to give a question to among
others a retired travel agent
and a barely intelligible
resident correspondent from
Pakistan who beyond assisting
in Inner City Press' eviction
spent the past weekend tweeting
that tennis star Serena
Williams and her outfits are “pathetic.”
That's today's UN.
Now
there is a deadline to cover
the UN General Assembly and
Inner City Press has applied
and has writing an open letter
to Haley, below, and cc-ed her
and Degory on its polite
letter to Smale. Watch this
site. Sixty days after Inner
City Press was physically
ousted frm the UN and then
subject to a ongoing ban from
entry to cover the Security
Council or UN noon briefing,
Inner City Press sent a now
open letter to US Ambassador
Nikki Haley, here:
Dear Ambassador Haley:
On
this the first day of your UN
Security Council Presidency,
this concerns the censorship
of Press the UN has engaged in
since July 3.
I
was physically ousted that day
by UN Security while I
staked-out a meeting of the
Fifth (Budget) Committee as I
have for a decade. Right after
I spoke to Cameroon Ambassador
Tommo Monthe, chair of the
Fifth Committee, I was grabbed
by Lt Ronald E. Dobbins and
another officer, shirt torn,
laptop damaged, arm twisted.
This was covered in Fox News,
here,
as well as The (UK)
Independent.
On July 5 when I came
to cover the Security Council
meetings on Syria and Yemen, I
was banned from entering UN.
After a no due process review
by the Department of Public
Information's Alison Smale, my
accreditation was “withdrawn”
on August 17, seemingly for
life. The letter is online here,
downloadable with some of my
rebuttal (not heard by Smale
or DPI) here.
I have
raised this verbally to some
in your US Mission to the UN,
including eight days ago to
your spokesman John Degory,
followed up in writing with a
request to be admitted to your
September 4 Program of World
press conference. In your
first such press conference on
3 April 2017, I asked you
about peacekeepers' sexual
abuse and the continuing need
for the Freedom of Information
Act at the UN. Video here.
As
things stand, without any due
process, I am banned from your
press conference -- at which,
for the record, I would like
to ask you about the
Anglophone crisis in Cameroon
which I asked you about on 18
October 2017. Video here.
I am also banned from covering
the General Assembly High
Level week, the deadline for
accreditation for which is
September 5.
I
firmly believe I have a right
to cover this member states'
event, despite what I see as
bias and lawlessness by DPI
and the wider Secretariat. UN
spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric in an
August 27 noon
briefing I was
banned from
attending cut
off a question
about my
ouster, video
here,
insisting that
to say this is
about freedom
of the press
would be
wrong. (Then
why is it in
the Press
Freedom
Tracker, here,
and the Columbia
Journalism
Review,
among others
for example in
the UK,
Japan,
Italy
and Cameroon?
Why this
5000+
signature
petition?) They
have gotten so petty as to get
UNICEF to block me from a book
event they had invited me to
on September 5. They similarly
got my blocked from a press
conference held outside of the
UN at the Pierre Hotel by the
UN World Intellectual Property
Organization, whose work on
North Korea's cyanide patents
I have also asked you about.
So I am
writing to you, asking for
your intervention at least on
the limited issues of not
being blocked from attending
your September 4 press
conference and relatedly DPI
relenting and not blocking me
from covering the GA High
Level Week, and allowing me to
apply and be accredited on
Sept 5 like thousands of other
correspondents, many state
media of government with
little respect for press
freedom.
Bigger picture, why has the UN
banned me for 60 days and
counting? I think it is
because, more than before,
they cannot or feel they do
not have to put up with
critical questions and
coverage.
Not to be
put too fine a point on it,
but this is NOT a new day at
the UN - or what is new about
it is the willingness to rough
up and journalist and ban its
media for life, with no due
process or appeal. This is not
consistent with the First
Amendment of the US
Constitution (which it is now
clear entirely stops east of
First Avenue) - nor with
Article 19 of the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
This is an
outrage at the UN that must be
addressed.
Matthew Russell
Lee, InnerCityPress.com
***
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