At UN,
Meeting on LGBT
Victims of
ISIS Is
Closed,
Censors' Club
After
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
August 24 --
Why do some
events or
speakers
inside the UN
building get
shunted off
into closed
meetings and
then a club,
not filmed or
webcast by UN
Television,
while others
are in public?
On the morning
of August 24,
Inner City
Press went to
cover the UN
Security
Council Arria
formula
meeting about
LGBT victims
of ISIS'
attacks in
Syria and Iraq,
but found a
sign
outside UN
Conference
Room 3 that
the meeting
was "Closed."
Photo tweeted
by
@InnerCityPress
here.
Even as a
speech inside
by the UN
Deputy
Secretary General
was promoted,
there was no
copy of his
remarks in the
UN
Spokesperson's
Office, just a
slew of Ban
Ki-moon
remarks in
Nigeria (Ban's
speech to 150
bankers was
entirely
withheld.)
US Ambassador
Samantha Power
spoke briefing
on her way in,
and it was
said that more
would be said
after.
But on this
late August
Monday, a day
when the UN
Press Briefing
Room with its
UNTV
webcasting
facilities,
open to all UN
accredited
journalists,
is entirely
open and
available, the
International
Gay and
Lesbian Human
Rights
Commission
and an
advocate from
Syria, Subhi
Nahas, are
being shunted
off into the
non-televised
private club
of the "UN
Correspondents
Association,"
UNCA, now
known as the UN's
Censorship
Alliance,
publicized
only to those
who pay UNCA
money?
More
troublingly,
UNCA and its
board members
have tried to
get the
investigative
Press, which
along with the
new Free
UN Coalition
for Access,
has covered
IGLHRC's
successful
passage
through the
UN's NGO
Committee, here
, thrown out
of the
UN. Is
this the right
venue,
including on
the criteria
of trying to
make the
information
widely
available?
(Inner
City Press
likewise
covered the
process of the
International
Lesbian and
Gay
Association
and the Australian
Lesbian
Medical
Association,
among others
like Freedom
Now, of
which it asked
the ECOSOC
President --
in the UN
Press Briefing
Room, here.
If any member
state asked
for the UN
Press Briefing
Room, IGLHRC's
Jessica Stern
and Subhi
Nahas of Organization
for Refuge,
Asylum and
Migration (ORAM)
could hold
their press
conference
open to all, webcast to the world. Was no country
willing to do
it? Surely the
US would be
willing. Or if
not, the UK,
or Lithuania,
or Chile, or
New Zealand,
or another. So
why not?
Did
UNCA, now the
UN's
Censorship
Alliance,
not explain
this? We may
have more on
this. Watch
this site.
, 
