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Swiss
Minister at UN
HLPF Is Asked
of Guterres
Reforms and
Hypocrisy By
Banned Inner
City Press
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
July 17 – For three days the
UN has hosted the “High Level
Political Forum on Sustainable
Development.” Inner City
Press, banned from the UN for
two weeks and counting for
covering the July 3 meeting of
the UN Budget Committee, has
tried to follow it from
outside the UN gates. On July
17 it was able to ask
Swiss Federal Councillor Doris
Leuthard, minister of the
environment, transport, energy
and communications, five
questions.
First,
Inner City Press asked
Leuthard what benefit, if any,
there would be to sustainable
development from Secretary
General Antonio Guterres' push
to grab the UN Resident
Coordinator system from UNDP
and give it to his deputy,
Amina J. Mohammed. (Neither
has answered Inner City Press'
questions about this or the
program budget implications,
choosing instead to physically
oust and now have their head
of DPI Alison Smale ban Inner
City Press for two weeks and
counting. Fox
News story here,
GAP blogs I
and II.)
Leuthard replied that
“Switzerland supports the
reforms, this is a cross
cutting issue, a lot of
agencies have to collaborate.”
But when Inner City Press
asked if Switzerland will be
contributing to the fund
Guterres' change means he must
raise, she said, “On the
budget I have no idea, it's
the Ambassador,” gesturing at
Ambassador Jürg Lauber.
Inner City
Press is correctly identifying
Lauber, unlike Smale's former
employer the New York Times,
which at least initially
attributed his quotes to
Valentin Zellweger, Swiss
ambassador to the United
Nations in Geneva. See NYT
correction here;
Smale's NYT did not, however,
correct the inaccuracy that on
the migration compact, “Louise
Arbour, a longtime United
Nations diplomat from Canada
who is its special
representative for
international migration, was
responsible for leading the
process to create the
agreement.” Actually, Lauber
and Mexico's Ambassador Juan
José Gómez Camacho led the
process. But Smale sees fit to
have Inner City Press
physically assaulted and now
banned. Meanwhile the NYT story
bylined no fewer than three NYT
staff, Megan Specia, Rick
Gladstone and Satoshi Sugiyama
- not one of whom has seen fit
to report a single word, or
even ask a single question,
unlike The
Independent, about the
ouster and banning of Inner
City Press by their ex-NYT
colleague Alison Smale.
Inner City
Press next asked Leuthard
about Lauber chairing the UN
Peacebuilding Configuration on
Burundi, another question
Inner City Press was told to
ask the Ambassador himself,
“we are in different
departments.”
Finally, Inner City
Press asked Leuthard about the
carbon impacts of flying to
the conference, and the
hypocrisy of the UN having on
the press floor Inner City
Press is banned from reporting
from garbage cans that purport
to separate for recycling cans
and bottles from garbage but
in fact mix it all up.
Leuthard replied and everyone
can do better, concluding that
“Without flying around we
can't move... From time to
time, you cannot avoid that.”
She was polite throughout, the
holding the press encounter
outside of the increasingly
corrupt and censoring UN was
appreciated. Leuthard will be
joining the UN UN "High-Level
Panel on Digital Cooperation,
so she will have to deal with
the UN censorship sooner
rather than later. Watch this
site.
***
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