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"Firing"
of UN African
Staff
Attributed to
Guterres &
Groves,
Harris, Jiang
and Smale
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
February 2 – Today's
UN of Antonio
Guterres, who
just met
with ICC
indictee Omar
al Bashir, and
his Deputy
Amina J.
Mohammed who
has refused
Press questions
on her
rosewood
signatures and
now the
refoulement of
47 people to
Cameroon from
"her" Nigeria,
has become a
place of
corruption and
censorship.
The censorship
piece is
implemented by
the Department
of Public
Information,
whose boss
Alison Smale
has refused
Press
petitions
since
September, not
even
acknowledging
receipt. But
the scam goes
right to the
top: Inner
City Press,
after
reporting on
Smale's
disregard for
the UN General
Assembly
resolutions on
Kiswahili
posts, has
learned that
Guterres
himself is
directly
involved.
Guterres wants
UN social
media to
promote him; a
team including
Joachim Harris
("D-1 out of
nowhere,"
whistleblowers
say, linking
it to the
"firing" of
African staff
that the UN
has typically
tried to
ascribe to
contracts just
happening to
expire) and
social media
head Nancy
Groves have
convinced him
they can raise
his profile.
So he didn't
care, when
Africans were
let go. The
social media
unit was set
up by three
time loser
Maher Nasser,
thinking it
would get him
the top DPI
job. It
didn't, and he
is now on a
sabbatical not
available to
other UN
staff. "The
whole team is
corrupt," as
one DPI
staffer put
it,
specifically
naming Hua
Jiang. These
geniuses
continue to
give full
access,
ghoulishly, to
a never seen
Egyptian state
journalist
Sanaa Youssef,
who hasn't
asked a single
question in
ten years,
while
restricting
Inner City
Press without
once describing
what the rules
are. It is a travesty
- and it goes
right to the
top. On
January 30 as
Inner City
Press sought
to complete
its reporting
for the day on
Guterres'
Bashir meeting
and Mohammed's
Cameroon
no-answer, and
ongoing dodges
on Yemen and
Myanmar, where
Guterres still
hasn't named
the mandated
envor, it had
a problem. It
was invited to
the month's UN
Security
Council
president's
end of
presidency
reception,
6:30 to 8:30 -
but with its
accreditation
reduced by
censorship, it
could not get
back into the
UN after 7 pm,
to the already
delayed UN
video. It ran
to at least
enter the
reception -
but the
elevator led
to a jammed
packed third
floor,
diplomats
lined up to
shake the
outgoing UNSC
president's
hand. Inner
City Press
turn to turn
tail back to
the UN,
passing on its
way favored,
pro-UN
correspondents
under no such
restriction.
Periscope here. Inner
City Press has
written about
this to the
head of the UN
Department of
Public
Information Alison
Smale, in
Sepember
2017 - no
answer but a
new threat
- and this
month,
when Smale's
DPI it handing
out full
access passes
to no-show
state media.
No answer at
all: pure
censorship. When
UN Secretary General Antonio
Guterres held a "Global Town
Hall Meeting" on January 17,
the meeting was closed but
Inner City Press came in early
to stake it out: to stand in
front and ask the attendees
what they think of Guterres'
performance. Unlike other
correspondents at the UN,
Inner City Press is required
to have a minder to do such
stakeouts on the UN's second
floor - and on January 17 at
the appointed hour, 8:45 am,
there was no minder available.
Periscope video here.
Finally it was possible, after
Guterres passed by and started
his pitch. At his press
conference the day before he
twice said, "there were no
budget cuts in relation to the
regular budget of the United
Nations." This is contrary to
what Inner City Press found
when it, as the only media
present, covered the UN budget
endgame through 2 am on
Christmas Eve. It is also
contradicted by this statement
exclusively to Inner City
Press from staff, edited to
preserve anonymity: "What
I feel the public or even the missions
themselves don't understand, are the
repercussions of the proposed cuts. The Fifth
Committee members slashed the budget left and
right, without thinking for one second what it
actually meant. The first thing to go as a
result, is one of your favorite topics:
transparency. Based on what has been said
internally, they are looking to cut down on
multilingualism and language accessibility
within DPI production, leaving English as a
lingua franca (!).
This means that missions interested in staying
up to date on UN news and events will not be
able to access information in their language,
if that language is indeed French,
Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian. Nor will
the public. As you may imagine, this raises a
serious issue in regards to transparency and
multilingualism. The founding values of the UN
were set in place in order to make the body a
fair playing field for all. By making
information available only in English, what
message will that send? How will it affect the
missions? How will the UN be able to forge a
closer relationship with the public around the
world? The bias will shift heavily in favor of
developed countries, who will have the initial
access to all information due to linguistic
advantages. These talks on cuts are
happening behind closed doors and only
potentially affected employees are being
informed. The missions and the public won't
know until it's too late to do anything
about it, unless somebody holds them
accountable now. But now, you know.
And I hope that disseminating this information
and holding those in power at the higher
echelons of DPI accountable, will help
preserve access to information -- which is
after all, a human right. We hope to see you
there too." But the meeting was closed, and
minder only belatedly available. We'll have
more on this. The day before
on January 16 when Guterres
came to give his speech for
2018 to the UN General
Assembly, the Press was
blocked from staking it out by
the censorship restricts he
has in place. Periscope here,
UNresponded to letter here.
Once inside the Trusteeship
Council Chamber, Guterres said
he had 12 points. One was
Myanmar, although he did not
even mention the mandate on
his to name an envoy
to the country, which he has
not done. Another was North
Korea; he confirmed he will go
to the opening ceremony of the
PyeongChang
Olympics. He lumped all of
Africa into just one of his 12
points, despite the Continent
being 60% of the UN Security
Council's agenda. He did not
mention Cameroon
or other long time family
ruled countries like Togo and
Gabon that his envoys are
propping up. His Deputy Amina
J. Mohammed, who is in “her”
Nigeria silent on the
abductions there, was not
present; her chief staff was,
but as before, no response to
emails or questions about the
4000 rosewood
signature. Guterres hasn't
even started an audit of the
UN bribery indictments
of Patrick Ho and Cheikh Gadio
and regarding China Energy
Fund Committee brought
November 20 in the Southern
District of New York. Guterres
said he has zero tolerance for
sexual harassment but has done
none, and his spokesman
Stephane Dujarric hasn't even
answered Inner City Press on,
the case
of Frank La Rule at UNESCO.
The UN like UNESCO claims it
is for free speech and press
freedom, but no answer on The
Rappler; nor has DPI chief
Alison Smale even answered
Inner City Press' and the Free
UN Coalition for Access'
three petitions
about even handed media access
and content neutral rules, or
this
petition. Guterres is slated
to take, selected by Dujarric,
questions at 12:45. Watch this
site. The spring thaw in
Antonio Guterres' first year
as UN Secretary General, in
March and April, began to
reveal hypocrisy. A small but
telling example was when,
after Guterres called on
people all over the world to
turn off their lights for
Earth Hour, Inner City Press found
the lights on at the
UN-owned mansion on Sutton
Place where Guterres lives.
At first the UN
refused to answer Inner City
Press where Guterres was - Lisbon
- then accused it of “monitoring
the residence.” It's called
journalism: with the UN
refusing to disclose even what
country Guterres is in,
checking the residence is the
only way. The UN also refuses
to disclose how much these
Lisbon trips cost the global
taxpayers, for example how
many UN Security officials are
taken, where they stay and for
how much.
Likewise
Guterres' 2016 financial disclosure
differed significantly from
what he filed as head of UNHCR
in 2013. This has yet to be
explained. In April Guterres
was petitioned to replace the
UN's pro-Saudi Yemen
envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh
Ahmed. But when Inner City
Press asked, Guterres'
spokespeople refused to even
confirm receipt of the letter.
This happened on
a petition by staff
too, about retaliation by
Francis Gurry the head of the
UN World Intellectual Property
Organization, whose assistance
to North Korea's cyanide
patents Guterres did not act
on.
In late April,
Guterres did nothing as
Tanzania expelled
his resident coordinator, a
far cry from his knee-jerk
defense later in the year -
continuing on December
27 - of the 4000
rosewood signatures by his
Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed.
Sustainable development? Try
hypocrisy, and censorship and
restriction of the Press which
covers it - and Cameroon, here. We'll have more
on this.
In Antonio
Guterres' first two months as
UN Secretary General, the
longstanding Cyprus talks
began to fall apart,
and Guterres stood silent
as Burundi, for example, banned
access by UN officials.
Guterres ignored a protest by
whistleblowers against Francis
Gurry of the UN World
Intellectual Property
Organization, and that UN
agency's work on North Korea's
cyanide patents.
He did
nothing about a UN waste dump
exposed
by Inner City Press in the
Central African Republic,
despite his predecessor Ban
Ki-moon's record with waste in
Haiti and elsewhere. While he
announced that Kenyan troops
would head back to South Sudan
to join UN Peacekeeping, he
appointed the fifth
Frenchman in a row to head
this DPKO, Jean-Pierre
Lacroix.
Meanwhile he was
rebuffed in his attempt to
appoint Fayyad to head the
UN's Libya mission, perhaps
explaining his refusal later
in the year to take a single
press question after reading
out his canned statement on
Jerusalem. In a harbinger of
his approach to UN corruption
and (non) reform, his UN was
named as not providing
requested documents in the first
UN bribery case, of Ng Lap
Seng. (In the second case, of
Patrick Ho and Cheikh Gadio,
Guterres has yet to even
launch an audit).
February 2017
ended with a seeming second
wind, the belated arrival of
Guterres deputy Amina J.
Mohammed. Inner City Press was
throughout constructive;
it would later emerge that
during the delay Mohammed
signed 4000 certificates for
endangered Nigerian and
Cameroonian rosewood already
exported to China, something
Guterres has refused to
investigate despite a petition
with 92,000 requests.
Guterres' first
interaction with UN staff was
a Town Hall meeting on January
9. Even though it was on the
UN's public website, when
Inner City Press live-streamed
it on Periscope
for the impacted public to see
it received a threat that this
violated unspecified
UN's guidelines. This has been
a pattern in Guterres' first
year: threats to Press for
unspecified violations, such
as that of Maher
Nasser on October 20,
and a total failure to respond
or reform by Nasser's boss, Alison
Smale. Ultimately,
Guterres is responsible.
***
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