UNITED
NATIONS, March
26 -- While
extremist
Buddhist monks
were burning a
mosque in
Meikhtila in
central
Myanmar,
journalists
seeking to
document it
were attacked,
cameras taken,
memory cards
destroyed.
On
Tuesday when
UN envoy Vijay
Nambiar called
in from
Thailand,
Inner
City Press
asked him
about the
attacks, and
what if
anything the
UN
is doing to
collect
evidence.
Nambiar
replied,
“we had heard
about this, we
are in process
of checking”
what he called
“efforts to
forcibly
prevent
journalists
from
reporting.” Video
here from
Minute 11:40.
Right
in the UN in
New York, we've
noted,
photographers
were ordered
to
remove and
erase their
memory cards,
admittedly
only of
Beyonce
and
not the
burning of a
mosque.
But
thus is the UN
corrupted --
despite
the photo
deletion issue
being twice
raised, the
only response
has
been to
whisper to the
UN's cafeteria
contractor
Aramark,
which had
nothing to do
with the
incident. Click
here.
Of
the UN,
Nambiar said
it is
“difficult for
us to collect
evidence,
we need
cooperation
from civil
society and
other
elements.”
Further
passing
the buck, he
added that “in
coming weeks
more
outsiders,
including
members of the
diplomatic
community will
be in a
position
to visit and
collect
information.”
There
are a number
of
misunderstandings
about the
killings, now
numbering
at least 40,
in central
Myanmar. The
UN-selected
first question
for
Nambiar, taken
by the UN
Correspondents
Association in
that name,
conflated this
with the
violence
against the
Rohingya. Video
here,
from Minute
6:10.
When
Inner City
Press was
called on it
thanked
Nambiar on
behalf of the
Free
UN Coalition
for Access,
because UNCA
had first
thrust itself
forward.
Ironically,
given
the Myanmar
press
censorship
question
raised, UNCA
itself has
become known
at the UN's
Censorship
Alliance, tearing down
FUNCA
flyers and
most recently
having its
president Pamela Falk
take
photographs of
the UN's March
18 raid on
Inner City
Press' office.
Falk
then
made a legal
threat,
from her
CBSNews.com
e-mail address,
to not
dare even
question why
she took the
photographs,
despite photos
from
the raid showing
up in BuzzFeed
on March 22
and the UN
denying these
were “their”
pictures.
While
the UN, given
immunity, is
more lawless
than Myanmar,
on the bright
side in the US
while a person
or company
like CBS can
make all the
legal threats
it wants, it
is dubious to
claim “false
light”
defamation for
asking
question about
a public
figure. But
hey, they
don't call it
the UN's
Censorship
Alliance for
nothing.
Footnote:
Nambiar,
when he was
Ban Ki-moon's
chief of
staff, in Sri
Lanka ran
into problems
of evidence
collection, to
put it
diplomatically.
Now
with
anti-Press
moves at the
UN, one
wonders, and
hopes to find
out,
the views of
his successor.
Watch this
site.
, 
