Pro-UN
Posters
Allowed But
Dissent To Be
Torn Down,
Banning Free
Speech as
Trend
UNITED
NATIONS, June
18 -- The UN's
lack of
respect for
free speech is
not a static
fact: it is
becoming
worse.
Earlier
this
year, just
after the
formation of
the Free
UN Coalition
for Access
was announced
on fliers that
the UN and
members of its
UN Censorship
Alliance or
UNCA
repeatedly
tore down, the
UN e-mailed
out a
compromise.
Isabelle
Broyer
of the UN
Media
Accreditation
and Liaison
Unit wrote on
January 28,
2013, "As a
follow-up to
last week
information
about flyers,
members of the
press have
several ways
to communicate
with their
colleagues, if
they would
like to share
information...
paste it onto
your own
office door."
But
now the same
Isabelle
Broyer is ordering
the removal
even of a
simple Free UN
Coalition
Access sign
from Inner
City Press'
office door --
while saying
that two UNCA
signs can
remain up.
Click
here
to view the
Free UN
Coalition for
Access sign
on Inner City
Press' office
door, photo by
FUNCA member
Luiz
Rampelotto:
(c) Luiz
Rampelotto
Click
here to view
the UNCA signs,
in front of a
large space
custom-built
and given free
to the United
Nations
Correspondents
Association
for private
events they
don't even
inform
non-UNCA
members of.
Inner
City Press,
Creative
Commons
Meanwhile,
an
UNCA executive
committee
member given a
private office
next to Inner
City Press'
shared office
has pro-UN
propaganda
festooned on
his door. Photo here.
Inner
City Press,
Creative
Commons
That is
not
coming down.
The UN targets
specific
messages, and
seeks to ban
one dissenting
group while
propping up
another.
This
is true not
only of signs.
Broyer's
supervisor
Stephane
Dujarric,
formerly the
spokesperson
for the UN
Development
Program's
Helen Clark
and before
that Kofi
Annan, has not
only tried to
tell Inner
City Press how
to cover Ban
Ki-moon.
This year, he
asked that
Inner City
Press call
him "urgently"
about a single
tweet which
mentioned
World War Two,
the UN's
founding
event.
(It
was the
victors or not
losers in
World War Two
which got
Permanent
seats and veto
power on the
UN Security
Council, which
France
converted
under Kofi
Annan into
ownership of
the top job in
UN
Peacekeeping,
now held by Herve
Ladsous,
mentioned in
the tweet, the
fourth
Frenchman in a
row to run
DPKO.)
Meanwhile
when
an UNCA
Executive
Committee
member tweets
for example
that Syria's
Assad is like
Hitler, no
call from
Dujarric.
Likewise that
he should end
like Gaddafi.
Dujarric is
only
endeavoring to
micro-manage some
correspondents.
He likes UNCA
and its (Gulf
and Western)
leadership; he
tries to ban
the new Free
UN Coalition
for Access for
them, and for
others in the
UN. We will
have more on
this. Watch
this site.
* * *
These
reports
are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click here
for Sept 26, 2011 New Yorker on Inner City
Press at UN
Click
for
BloggingHeads.tv re Libya, Sri Lanka, UN
Corruption
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