UNITED NATIONS
GATE, November 6 – Gabon's
second generation rules Ali
Bongo is in a hospital in
Saudi Arabia, and in
Libreville Jean Ping who says
he was cheated out of the 2016
election has declared himself
president. The UN of Antonio
Guterres, who cavorts with and
covers up for long time
dictators like Cameroon's Paul
Biya and the Bongo family, is
typically silent. Let French
troops deploy, seems to be the
thinking. It's a UN and
UN-world blind spot: Human
Rights Watch, for example,
omitted Gabon like Cameroon
and Togo from its 2018 "World"
Report, telling Inner City
Press these weren't viewed as
top-90 problems. Then Inner
City Press which pursued the
issued was roughed up by
Guterres' Security and has
been banned from the UN for
125 days and counting. No one
let into the UN briefing room
by Antonio Guterres' spokesman
Stephane Dujarric has asked
about Gabon. This is the UN of
Guterres, on which even from
the UN Delegates Gate
entrance, Inner City Press
will have more. For now we can
report that Cameroon's long
time UN Ambassador Tommo
Monthe, whose chairmanship of
the UN Budget Committee was
co-extensive which and
triggered Guterres' shameful
silence on his boss' slaughter
of Anglophones, told Inner
City Press, of also cheated
Cameroonian candidate Maurice
Kamto, "He's like Jean Ping."
And another Francophone on the
scene laughed. As the
crackdown in Cameroon by
36-year government of Paul
Biya has grown worse and worse
in 2017 and 2018 and Inner
City Press has repeatedly
asked why UN Secretary General
Antonio Guterres only took a
golden statue from Biya in
October 2017, Guterres' UN
itself has cracked down, now
having banned Inner City Press
from entering the UN for 125
days and counting. Fox
News story here,
GAP blogs I
and II. Back
on 6 March
2018 before Guterres'
UN
Security had
roughed it up
and banned it,
Inner City
Press asked
Human Rights
Watch official
Jo Becker why the slaugher
in Cameroon
was not even
listed at a
Top-90 problem
in HRW's
2018
"World" report.
Becker told Inner
City Press that HRW has to
decide where to spend the
resources it receives, and
apparently didn't see Cameroon
as among the 90 countries
meriting a look in their
"World" report, nor Gabon or
Togo. Video here.
On July 19, with the UN
Censorship Alliance, HRW
belatedly and apparently to
try to raise funds off a
crisis it had ignored and
enabled held a briefing that
was truly disgusting. The
first question was given to a
Reuters reporter who has
repeatedly cut off Press
questions about Cameroon. Next
was UN Censorship Alliance
figure head saying why not
defer to the AU, which took a
golden statue. Then a Reuters
retiree; then a UN staffer
doubling as a UN resident
correspondent. It was truly
disgusting. We'll have more on
this.
Now on
July 19, with Inner City Press
banned from the UN and, UNlike
for example the Government
Accountability Project, HRW at
best doing nothing about this
banning of the Press despite a
series of e-mails to its Ken
Roth, Sarah Whitsos and
Akshaya Kumar, HRW has told
some it will present with the
UN Censorship Alliance the
following, complete with moral
equivalence:
"Human Rights
Watch will release “‘These
Killings Can Be Stopped’:
Abuses by Government and
Separatist Groups in
Cameroon’s Anglophone
Regions,” a report based on an
April 2018 mission to the
country. Researchers conducted
82 interviews with victims and
witnesses of abuses and key
informants. Human Rights Watch
analyzed satellite images
showing recent
burning in 20 villages and
verified half a dozen videos
showing abuses or their
aftermath.
Since late 2016, activists
from Cameroon’s Anglophone
minority have been calling for
their region’s independence.
Violent repression of mostly
peaceful demonstrations by
government forces in 2016 and
2017 has led to an escalation
of the conflict. Anglophone
separatists have extorted,
kidnapped, and killed
civilians, and prevented
children from going to
school." The briefers are
listed as Jonathan Pedneault,
Mausi Segun, and the
aforementioned Akshaya Kumar,
Deputy UN Director, Human
Rights Watch. We'll have more
on this - and on the role of
another HRW official Louis
Charbonneau in having lobbied
Guterres' spokesman to get
Inner City Press ousted from
the UN, using his link with
this UN Censorship Alliance,
then getting Google to remove
his leaked lobbying from
Search as allegedly
copyrighted under the US
Digital Millennium Copyright
Act. See Lou Charbonneau's
DMCA filing, here.
This is shameful.
Back on
March 6, to make sure its
question was not
misunderstood, given the
answer, Inner City Press
waited as others from who had
skipped the press conference
came in to ask questions, then
showed Ms. Becker the report.
She said she had understood
the question. (She did not
explain why "Ashley" who
answered for HRW Press never
returned with this answer, nor
put Inner City Press back on
HRW's mailing lists). So who
makes these decisions for
Human Rights Watch?
HRW has refused
to provide any read-outs of
the issues it raises to
Guterres. Guterres is himself
far from transparent. On
February 28 his close
protection ordered Inner City
Press to stop
recording, in a photo op
session in which Guterres
conveyed his "very very warm
regards" to Egypt's Sisi.
Guterres' Secretariat has
assigned Inner City Press'
long time UN work space to a no-show
Sisi state media, Akhbar
al Yom. (HRW's UN lobbying
previous lobbied Guterres'
spokesman to throw Inner City
Press out of the UN, then got
his leaked
complaint to the UN removed
from Google Search by mis-characterizing
it as copyrighted). So what
will happen and be discussed
at 3:330? Watch this site.
When Inner City Press was sent
the link to the 660-page 2018
report by Human Rights Watch,
it turned to the Table of
Contents to read the section
on Cameroon, which it covers
even as the UN, for now to the
highest levels, covers up. But
Cameroon was not there,
between Cambodia and Canada.
Tweeted photo here.
Nor under its French spelling,
Cameroun. Nor the word
Anglophone, much less
Ambazonia. Nor 36-year ruler
Paul Biya. Nor were Togo or
Gabon mentioned, photo here.
Online HRW report, perhaps to
be changed, here.
Inner City Press on the
morning of January 22 asked
HRW's press operation the
following: "Hello. Searching
today the HRW 2018 Report for
Cameroon (as well as Togo and
Gabon, for example), not
finding them in the Table of
Contents (photo attached), nor
word-search. (Seems the two
references to Cameroon,
despite the crackdown there,
are both in the Nigeria
section). Can you please
explain, on deadline? Also,
for future reference, can you
please restore Inner City
Press, at this email address,
to HRW's press email list and
explain the previous deletion?
Finally, does HRW/Ken Roth
intend to meet with UNSG
Guterres in the first half of
2018? What issues would HRW
raise? What issues did HRW
raise in March 2017, and why
did it decline to state any of
them at the time?" The reply,
not a real response, was from
an Ashley without a last name,
promising a response from
"researchers" which, a day
later, has not come: "Hi
Matthew, Thank you for your
email. I’ve sent your request
to our researchers and will
keep you posted. Best,
Ashley." Later on January 22,
Inner City Press wrote again
to hrwpress [at] hrw.org,
"Hello - this morning on the
simple question why Cameroon,
Togo and Gabon are not in the
Table of Contents of HRW's
2018 Report, the reply was
'I’ve sent your request to our
researchers and will keep you
posted.' What is the answer?
Please advise." And...
nothing. In March 2017 after
Ken Roth and three of his
Human Rights Watch UN
lobbyists went to the UN for a
meeting on the 38th floor,
Inner City Press asked Roth
and his lobbyists, including
two former UN correspondents
Louis Charbonneau and Philippe
Bolopion, for a summary of
what HRW had raised. There was
no answer at all. Video
here. It was a typical
UN scene: a group promoting
principles outside of the UN
not pursuing them inside the
UN, in order to maintain
access and perceived
influence. Now having asked
online what it is missing, the
absence not only of Togo but
also Gabon has been noted.
We'll have more on this.
Human
Rights Watch speechifies about
accountability but has said
much less about the UN killing
10,000 Haitians with cholera,
or about the lack of
prosecutions for peacekeepers'
sexual abuse. The UN talks
about the rule of law but does
not abide by it.
HRW was informed in detail of
the UN's lack of due process
for the press - but has done
nothing. In fact, HRW's UN
lobbyist Louis Charbonneau at
least twice tried to get Inner
City Press thrown out of the
UN (see here,
obtained under FOIA),
one time misusing
the US Digital Millennium
Copyright Act to try to cover
up his lobbying of the UN to
get Inner City Press thrown
out, here.
One year
ago, covering the UN
corruption scandals which have
resulted in two sets of
indictments for bribery
involving the UN, Inner City
Press was ordered to leave the
UN Press Briefing Room by then
Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon's spokesman Stephane
Dujarric.
Other
correspondents were allowed to
stay in the briefing room,
which Dujarric had "lent"
them. But he insisted that
Inner City Press leave. Video
here.
Inner City
Press asked to see any
paperwork that the event was
closed; none was provided.
Inner City Press stated that
if a single UN Security
official asked it to leave, it
would. Finally one guard came
and said Dujarric wanted it to
leave.
Inner City
Press immediately left,
uploaded the already
live-streamed Periscope video,
and continued digging into the
corruption that's resulted in
the indictment for bribery and
money laundering of Ban
Ki-moon's brother Ban Ki Sang
and nephew Dennis Bahn.
But three
weeks afterward, without a
single conversation or
opportunity to be heard, Ban's
Under Secretary General for
Public Information Cristina
Gallach ordered Inner City
Press to leave the UN, after
ten years, on two hours
notice. Order
here.
This
was enforced, as Inner City
Press worked on its laptop at
the UN Security Council
stakeout, by eight UN Security
officers led by Deputy Chief
McNulty, who tore Inner City
Press accreditation badge off
its chest and said, "Now you
are a trespasser." Audio
here.
Inner City
Press was marched down the
escalator and around the UN
traffic circle, without even
its coat which was up in its
longtime office. It was pushed
out of the gate and its
laptop, in a bag, was thrown
on the sidewalk and damaged.
The next
work day when Inner City Press
arranged for a fellow
journalist to sign it in as a
guest so it could cover the
Security Council, UN Security
official Matthew Sullivan said
it was Banned from UN premises
worldwide. Audio
here.
After three days covering the
UN from the park in front in
the sleet, and articles like
this one, Inner City Press
re-entered with a
"non-resident correspondents"
pass - to which it is still,
more than a year later,
confined.
There has
been no UN opportunity for
appeal or reinstatement. After
having five boxes of Inner
City Press' investigative
files thrown
on the sidewalk in April,
Gallach is giving
its office to an
Egyptian state media Akhbar al
Yom which rarely comes in, a
correspondent Sanaa Youssef
who had yet to ask a single
question.
Her only claim is
that she was once, decades
ago, a president of the United
Nations Correspondents
Association, the group to
which Duajrric "lent" the UN
Press Briefing Room, without
notice or written record, on
January 29, 2016.
Even as the
scope of Ban Ki-moon's
corruption was exposed upon
his return to South Korea, here,
his successor Antonio Guterres
has yet to reverse this year
of censorship and no due
process. On January 6 Dujarric
and Gallach led him on a tour
of... the UN Correspondents
Association, which now wants
him again in their clubhouse.
(More on this to follow.)
On January
27 as Inner City Press moved
to cover Guterres at the UN's
Holocaust event, it was
targeted by UN Security and
told it could not proceed
without a minder, who did not
appear for over 15 minutes.
The
harassment continued through
the day, as Inner City Press
exposed more corruption,
including and the use of
military contingents involved
in war crimes in Herve
Ladsous' UN Peacekeeping.
All of this
must change. This is a scam,
and censorship. This is
hypocrisy at and in the UN. We
will have more on this.
***
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