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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR Letter PFT Q&A

UNITED NATIONS GATE, August 30 – Colombia was presented as one of the only successes in the three desultory years Antonio Guterres has helmed the UN, censoring the Press to conceal his links to UN bribery. Now on August 30, this from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "The United States stands resolutely with the Government of Colombia, President Duque, and the Colombian people in their efforts to secure the just and lasting peace and security Colombia deserves.  We strongly repudiate recent calls by some individuals to abandon the FARC’s commitments under the 2016 peace accord and engage in further terrorism and violence.  We also condemn the continued terrorist activities of the ELN and those who enable it and give it safe haven.  Colombia has long been one of the United States’ strongest partners in the region.  The continuing adherence to and implementation of the 2016 peace accord is vital to sustainable progress on security, counternarcotics, human rights, and economic development.  The United States welcomes actions that ensure those who have committed or continue to commit serious crimes since the signing of the peace accord in 2016 are held accountable to the full extent of the law and are subject to extradition as appropriate and provided for under the agreement.  We will continue to support inclusive democratic institutions in Colombia.  They have been and continue to be crucial to advancing peace, security, and prosperity in Colombia and its neighbors." And this is the UN Security Council's and Antonio Guterres' success story.

After its  reporting on the United Nations as a resident correspondent for a decade, exposing war crimes and UN scandals from Sri Lanka to Yemen to Cameroon, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had Inner City Press roughly ousted and banned from the UN since 3 July 2018.

  On 24 August 2019 Inner City Press applied to  Guterres and his new Communications and media accreditation chief Melissa Fleming to be admitted like hundreds of others to cover the upcoming UN General Assembly. After receiving from Guterres' Security chief Gilles Michaud an ill-informed response passing the buck to the Department now run by Fleming, past 4 pm on Friday, August 30 the UN issued a denial of accreditation with no reasoning other than that accreditation had previously been revoked:

"From: malu <malu@un.org>
Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 4:23 PM
Subject: U.N. eAccreditation request for Matthew Lee Ref # M5413398 has been declined
To: Inner City Press:

Greetings Matthew Lee from Inner City Press,  Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M5413398, has been declined for the following reason: Media accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."

  This is Kafka-esque, and corrupt. We will have more, much more, on this.

When the UN's First Committee met for the first time in this 73rd session of the UN General Assembly, it was a fight and recorded vote on Day 1. Brazil proposed a briefing by the Secretary-General of the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean; Syria said there should be more time to consider it. Finally Brazil called for action, and it was the United States and Israel which voted No, along with 27 abstentions, and 86 for. Elected Noël Diarra (Mali) and José Ataíde Amaral (Portugal) as Vice-Chairs joining Vice-Chair Marissa Edwards (Guyana) and Muna Zawani Idris (Brunei), the Rapporteur. Inner City Press, banned from the UN and its General Assembly and member states for the 93d day by Secreary General Antonio Guterres, could only live tweet, not ask questions. Committee chair Ion Jirga repeated told member states, the ball is is your court. It is not a good beginning. Nor this: When the Security Council President for October, Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorentty Solíz of Bolivia, held a Press-less press conference on October 3, he was asked by a Yemeni journalist "with the Atlantic Council" about being blocked by the Bolivian Mission. He said, We will unblock you right away - in contrast to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who blocks banned Inner City Press with no reversal and these days, no answers. With Inner City Press not able to be present, the Western Sahara question Llorenti received was why it wasn't move covered up, why there was so many meetings about MINURSO. (It is only one month a year, the renewal, with consultations and adoption and one TCC meeting.) There was nothing on Cameroon. 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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