Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 27 -- What is the UN policy on postponing its noon briefings in deference to particular countries? To whom does the Office of the UN Spokesperson answer?

  On March 27 after the UN General Assembly voted on a Ukraine resolution and Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin prepared to speak at the GA stakeout, Inner City Press for the Free UN Coalition for Access tweeted at the UN Spokesperson that the noon briefing should be briefly delayed.

  This was not without precedent at all -- on October 1, 2013 the Spokesperson's Office delayed the noon briefing during the entirety of a speech by Israel.

  After asking Churkin about Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's meeting in Ukraine with the leader of the Svoboda Party -- Churkin said it was disturbing as Svoboda has been characterized as racist -- and without any response from the Spokesperson's Office, Inner City Press ran to the briefing room, camera still uncovered, audio recorder still running, hoping to find the briefing not yet started or at least still going.

  Arriving there at 12:10 pm, the briefing was already over. Inner City Press went and told deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq, "I wish you'd delayed it" to allow coverage of both Churkin's stakeout and the noon briefing.

  Haq replied that there had been seven to eight people in the briefing room, so he began. (Actually, as the UN video shows, it was nearly empty and Haq joked, "Full house, I see" - click here to view.)

  When his Office delayed the briefing for Israel in October, there were many more people waiting, including Inner City Press. So, for FUNCA, Haq was asked what the policy is.

  Haq said, "Matthew, you want a policy where it's all about you." Audio here.

  Well, the UN and Ban's Spokesperson's Office should have a policy, both so journalists can know if and when to run, and so that countries are treated equally, whatever Ban or his spokespeople thinks of them, or whatever they are saying about Ban.

   A week ago when new / old UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric phoned in a briefing from Moscow on his eleventh day on the job, the questions Haq chose for him all pointed in one direction, the type of favoritism growing ever worse at the UN.

   Dujarric's deputy Farhan Haq, who ended his truncated eight minutes of Q&A on the "rest of the world" by chiding Inner City Press for asking too many questions -- actually, only South Sudan and a UN Staff Union protest against Ban Ki-moon's mobility plan -- selected for Dujarric only one type of question.

  In fact, the questions were repetitive, trying to get a statement from Ban even if only spokesperson-mediated that the Crimea referendum was illegal. Haq called on a series of executive committee members of the old UN Correspondents Association, which previously lobbied Dujarric to try to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN. Several of these, it has been noted there is no record of them writing or reporting about Ukraine. But this is how the UN works, or doesn't work, now.

   Earlier on March 20, the US announced a series of new sanctions including against Bank Rossiya. Inner City Press thought this should be asked to Dujarric in Moscow, if Ban or Putin or Lavrov had raised it. But none of those called on by Haq even asked the question.  We'll have more on this.

  Last week, Dujarric did not provide a Press requested read-out of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's meeting earlier in the week with Estonia's foreign minister, who was captured on leaked audio recounting that the same snipers may well have shot both police and protesters in Ukraine. No read-out?

  Adding to unanswered questions still not answered by March 27 ranging from Thailand to Terje Roed-Larsen, before 8 am on March 14 Inner City Press asked Dujarric:

  Here is the totality of Dujarric's office answers to the CAR question:

  Tellingly, the question about UN Peacekeeping run by Herve Ladsous was not even mentioned in this cursory response, nor does the paragraph on CAR show any actual follow up to Navi Pillay's statement about France putting Muslims at risk.

  These were the other questions asked by Inner City Press at 8 am on March 13:

  Tellingly, some in the press briefing room applauded before Dujarric even said a word. He read a statement for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about "The Ukraine."

  In the question and answer session, four of the first five questioners Dujarric called on were among the 15 executive committee members of the United Nations Correspondents Association, with which Dujarric has some history.

  Inner City Press asked if Ban Ki-moon had the Haiti cholera court papers taped to his residence door on January 20 -- no answer -- and for UN response to Channel 4's new video showing abuse by the military of Sri Lanka, from which the UN accepts peacekeepers and even Shavendra Silva as an adviser. (Dujarric said he hasn't seen the video; it is online here: warning, graphic).

  On the case against the UN for bringing cholera to Haiti, Inner City Press asked Dujarric to confirm that the court papers were taped to the door of Ban's residence on January. Dujarric declined to confirm - or deny - this. Video on Haiti (and Sri Lanka) here.

  As it did days ago, Inner City Press asked for the status of selecting Dujarric's replacement as head of the News and Media Division, in charge of UN media accreditation. No answer has been given about this status. This is of concern.

 A flier the Free UN Coalition for Access posted on this topic, on the "non-UNCA" bulletin board it advocated for, was torn down on March 7. At a second briefing, by the CTBTO, on March 10 Dujarric called first on UNCA, then on others.

  When Inner City Press thanked CTBTO's Zerbo on behalf of FUNCA - the point is, there cannot be only one organization given UNCA's track record of attempted censorship and even more now with Dujarric's history with them -- Dujarric tried to move on (back to UNCA) before the related question on France's nuclear tests in the Pacific was answered.

  It is a new era, requiring a new approach.

  Two years ago Dujarric was re-introduced to UN journalist as the chief of the News & Media Division, in a reception in what the UN called "UNCA Square." And then the censorship attempts began.

  A journalist for Iranian TV, found to have a rubber gun which was a prop in an independent film he was working on, had his UN accreditation revoked, permanently. Dujarric was in charge of Media Accreditation, and Inner City Press asked him for a justification of this "one strike and you're out policy." No answer was ever provided by Dujarric.

  Also in his Media Accreditation role, Dujarric chastised Inner City Press for daring to go stand outside and try to cover a meeting of Ban's Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations, which included controversial Sri Lankan military figure Shavendra Silva. After the Sri Lankan government directed a complaint letter to the aforementioned UNCA, Inner City Press was told it could not cover the meetings.

Inner City Press, then on the board of UNCA, was not notified when the organization's then president agreed to screen a Sri Lankan government film denying war crimes. After it published an article noting that the UNCA president had in the past rented one of his apartments to Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, demands were made that Inner City Press remove the article from the Internet.

UNCA took to sending copies of correspondence to Dujarric, about articles Inner City Press had written about officials and diplomats of Dujarric's native France. Finally, UNCA first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters sent a complaint against Inner City Press to Dujarric, calling it "for the record."

More recently, Charbonneau has gotten one of his complaints to Dujarric banned from Google's Search, using a filing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- straight up censorship. What does Dujarric say?

In fact, Dujarric solicited complaints against Inner City Press from other big-media UNCA board members, through a private, including through non-UN email address. Freedom of Information Act responses show that UNCA board members met with "the UN" to request that Inner City Press be thrown out. Once Inner City Press published some of these, Dujarric on June 29, 2012 asked to meet Inner City Press.

  Dujarric told Inner City Press not to refer to Ban Ki-moon as "Wan Ki-moon" and not to refer to Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row atop UN Peacekeeping, as The Drone despite Ladsous proposing the UN's first use of drones and refusing to answer Press questions about it.

  This and a specious criticism for having signed Nobel Peace Prize Winner Tawakul Karman of Yemen into the UN, where she dared speak on the UN microphone after a Security Council meeting on Yemen, were linked by Dujarric to re-accreditation he controlled.

  Criticism of stories, coverage and even tweets is fine -- but when done by an official in charge of accreditation, and even tied to accreditation, we call it what it is: censorship.

Disgusted, Inner City Press and another long time correspondent from Brazil founded the Free UN Coalition for Access as an alternative to the insider UNCA, which did not for example offer any defense to the cameraman thrown out for the rubber gun. (Reuters' Charbonneau, in fact, wrote a story playing up the Iranian angle.)

  But Dujarric became the interlocutor for FUNCA. He said only UNCA was needed. After convening a meeting between FUNCA and UNCA, at which Inner City Press openly said "this is on the record" and UNCA president Pamela Falk of CBS said, "He's going to write about this," Dujarric sent Inner City Press a letter which claimed the meeting was off the record and said FUNCA was not a DPI interlocutor for reform.

  So on March 20, it was a UNCA executive committee top heavy circus, here were their election results, compared to votes for that position in December 2011, those called on in the short March 20 Q&A in bold:

  There have been no reforms since, quite the opposite. Dujarric, who earlier refused a New York Civil Liberties Union request that the UN provide due process to journalists, continued the Kafka-esque atmosphere in March 2013 when Reuters and Agence France-Presse filed stealth complaints leading with how Inner City Press asked a question to Herve Ladsous.

  When Dujarric's Accreditation Unit led a raid on Inner City Press' office, photos from which quickly appeared on BuzzFeed, Dujarric denied any role in giving out the photos. But the published photos are identical to the ones his unit took that day.

  Since the letter with the false "off the record" claim, the raid and photos and attempt to censor tweets, there has been very little contact (though there was an attempt to essentially ban FUNCA, another limitation on freedom of association, speech and press). FUNCA has continued, working with UN-focused journalists not only in New York but as far afield as Somaliland and Colombia.