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By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 21 – The UN under Antonio Guterres and his spokesman Stephane Dujarric is so untransparent that it refuses to provide read-outs or notice of important meetings or to provide a list of who accompanies Guterres on his many trips or junkets. In the past week Inner City Press asked Dujarric why there was not read-out by the UN of Guterres' meeting with Jared Kushner, and no notice of Guterres' dinner with Nikki Haley and others in the UN's mansion, which Dujarric complains Inner City Press dares to livestream from the public New York City sidewalk. Dujarric neither provided a read-out nor an answer why not. He continues with his restrictions on the Press.

  Now with Guterres in Russia, primarily for the World Cup and the Portugal - Morocco game also attended by disgraced FIFA ex-boss Sepp Blatter, Guterres has at least four UN officials, as well as UN security, with him. Who are they? Well, a photograph shows Rosemary DiCarlo and staffer Graca - as well as Russian nominated head of UN Counter-Terrorism, from whose background briefing before he flew to Moscow Inner City Press was excluded due to Dujarric's censorship.  The UN took most of its counter-terrorism money from Saudi Arabia, just as Secretary General Antonio Guterres smiled and took a $930 million check from Saudi's Crown Prince and said nothing about Saudi bombing of Yemen, and now assault on the port of Hodeidah there. On June 18 the UN in New York held a so-called background briefing for only some of the media which cover the UN day to day.  Now we have asked why.

  Excluded from the background briefing unlike some media who rarely if every report on the issue was Inner City Press, which has criticized Guterres for his silence in taking the Saudi check, and which remains restricted for covering the bribery of the UN by Ng Lap Seng and South South News - which has placed people not only in UNTV but even in UN Department of Public Information - and now by Patrick Ho and the China Energy Fund Committee.

    Other than more targeted censorship, the only rationale for excluding Inner City Press which was one of only five media - including one which also works for UN Photo - covering the Small Arms and Light Weapons press conference on June 18, is that it is no longer a “resident correspondent.”

 This is due to Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who evicted Inner City Press from the UN Press Briefing Room and from its office, and from DPI's Alison Smale, who still has no content neutral rule while putting in Inner City Press' office a no-show Egypt state media Akhbar al Yom. And so on June 19, Inner City Press wrote to the person who took "RSVPs" for the briefing, and to Vladimir Voronkov and to Alison Smale: "this is a request to be informed on what basis, or using which criteria, it was decided to invite some but not all journalists who cover the UN and Counter-Terrorism to the June 18 background briefing about the upcoming High Level Conference. I am a journalist who covers the UN closes, asks the Spokesperson many questions including about counter-terrorism. I would like to know why I was not informed of the background briefing about the June 28-29 Conference. Please confirm receipt, on deadline." And... nothing. Just as Smale has refused to answer detailed petitions with 5000+ signatures, she did not answer this. She has her husband playing piano at a World Cup event - this is today's UN. On the same June 19, Minutes before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley announced the US' withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council, the doors to the UN Press Briefing Room opened. But nothing was announced. While many media had asked the UN for response, the spokesman for out of town, World Cup bound Secretary General Antonio Guterres arranged for a private “press conference” with Al Jazeera. Inner City Press, evicted from the UN Press Briefing Room and its UN work space by Dujarric, was trying to cover the HRC announcement from a small focus booth on the UN second floor. Click here for Inner City Press' Periscope stream. It observed Al Jazeera's cameraman go by, with a staffer from spokesman Stephane Dujarric's office, then Al Jazeera's correspondent then producer. In an abundance of caution Inner City Press did not go into the UN Press Briefing Room -- which, it and the Free UN Coalition for Access maintain cannot legitimately be opened to some but not other correspondents. Instead, Inner City Press asked the UN Department of Public Information's minder unit, which it must now use to cover any events in the General Assembly, to ask what was taking place in the UN Press Briefing Room. The DPI staffer went in, and then re-emerged with Dujarric and the three Al Jazeera staffers. “No event,” Inner City Press was told. The Al Jazeera producer said they had arranged for a sound byte. Oh. So this is how it is done at the UN.  We'll have more on this.

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