After
13 Killed in Casamance, ICP Asks
UN For Comment of
Senegal-Based Chambas, None
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
January 8 – The UN and its
envoys are more and more silent
and ineffectual under Secretary
General Antonio Guterres. From
Cameroon and now Nigeria,
through Gabon, Togo and Guinea
Bissau, the UN is silent, the
envoys perhaps taking their lead
from Guterres himself, who went
to Cameroon only to accept Paul
Biya's golden statement. As to
Casamance and Senegal where UN
envoy Chambas is based, Inner
City Press on January 8 asked
Guterres spokesman Stephane
Dujarri, UN transcript here:
Inner City Press: Over the
weekend, some 13 people were
killed in the Cas… Casamance
region in Senegal, which has
been an ongoing issue between
that country and the people in
Casamance. And I wanted to
know if DPA [Department of
Political Affairs] or the
various envoys, maybe Mr.
[Mohammed ibn] Chambas, have any
comment or are going to do
anything? Spokesman: Yes,
we're obviously following the
matter. I don't have
anything to say publicly at this
point." Nor five hours later,
when Dujarric called the end of
day "lid" and closed his office.
We'll have more on this. On
Guinea Bissau, ECOWAS set a
two-month deadline for the
political standoff in Guinea
Bissau or, it said Sunday, it
will begin imposing sanctions.
While more decisive that the UN
Security Council which oversees
ongoing slaughter in Yemen as in
Cameroon, it is still ironic to
send for example the president
of Togo, shooting protesters, to
Guinea Bissau to urge dialogue.
But it is noteworthy, as one of
Guinea-Bissau's role in the
wider corruption pattern in the
UN, along with the UN bribery
indictment of Cheikh Gadio the
former foreign minister of
Senegal and Patrick Ho of the
China Energy Fund Committee, a
scandal on which Secretary
General Antonio Guterres has yet
to even order an audit or take
questions. In the UN on 11
August 2017, the Ambassador of
Guinea Bissau gave a speech in
front of a curved wall of
painting by a Chinese artist,
praising a Memorandum of
Understanding reached between
his country and something called
“UNCG,” which he did not define.
Inner City Press, evicted
and still restricted for
covering Macau-based buinessman
Ng Lap Seng's purchase of and
agreements with various small
countries and UN entities,
managed to Periscope the event,
here.
Afterward Inner City Press
research found that UNCG is the
UN Commutech Group, which on the
Internet has a total of two
Tweets and a website that is
still “UNder construction,” even
as the group brags of having
penetrated the UN General
Assembly high level week in 2015
and 2016.
That General Assembly week in
2015 is the one in which then
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's
nephew Dennis Bahn and brother,
still on the lam, used Ban's and
the UN's name to try to sell
real estate in Vietnam,
according to the US Attorney's
indictment in the US Court for
the Southern District of New
York.
Inner City Press is covering
that case as well, even as the
UN Department of Public
Information, soon
to be headed by Alison Smale of
the New York Times, refuses even
after Ng's conviction on all
charges to return
Inner City Press to regular
Resident Correspondent
accreditation and its office,
for now assigned to an Egyptian
state media Akhbar al Yom whose
correspondent Sanaa Youssef, a
1984 president of the UN
Correspondents Association,
rarely comes in and never asks
questions.
Has the UN reformed or changed
under Ban's successor Antonio
Guterres and his deputy Amina J.
Mohammed, in power more than
seven months? Will its DPI
"Global Communications," under
Smale, who will replace Cristina
Gallach who according even to a
UN audit first published
by Inner City Press allowed Ng,
with no due diligence, to buy
events in the UN and even the UN
slavery memorial?
There is a structural conflict
of interest that Inner City
Press and now the Free
UN Coalition for Access
have pointed out: the people in
charge of pro-UN propaganda are
also allowed to rule on the
accreditation and access of
independent press covering the
UN more critically, with no
content-neutral rules, or rules
of any kind. What could do
wrong?
The August 11 event had free
cans of (warm) beer, duck and
chicken feet, and the banner of
ECOWAS, the mission of Sierra
Leone and the Cote d'Ivoire
(Ivory Coast) consulate. But
only a few hours later, while
the painting remained up, the
identifying paraphernalia was
gone.
The UN provided support services
to the event, and Inner City
Press has the document, as it
awaits further documents from
the Ng Lap Seng trial. The UN is
corrupt. We'll have more on
this.
***
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