UN
Officials Threaten to Sue Press
While Misusing Immunity, From
Ban to Son in Law
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
February 20 –
Can an official of the United
Nations, protected by legal
immunity, nevertheless make
legal threats to sue the media
for its reporting on war
crimes and UN corruption? The
question has been raised not
only by just-gone Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon's threats
to take “further measures” for
reporting on his alleged
involvement in bribery cases,
but also by Ban's son in law
Siddharth Chatterjee's
attempts to deny involvement
in abuses by his military unit
in Sri Lanka.
Inner City Press has reported
on those abuses, including
that Chatterjee
inappropriately sought to get
the information, in at least
one case successfully, removed
from the Internet. On Sunday
February 19, 2017, after
Chatterjee had refused a
request that he respond on
camera and then a UN staff
member to three times
long-distance call Inner City
Press on that Sunday about the
issue, Inner City Press asked
him in written, at his UN
email address, to “confirm or
deny that you acted to get an
article about yourself removed
from a publication, on
information and belief the
Indian Star.”
Chatterjee has responsed, “Yes
I did tell [the journalist]
that what was published in the
Star was untrue and
libellous.”
This
is in keeping with
Chatterjee's father in law's
Ban Ki-moon's threat to South
Korean's Sisa Journal to take
“further measures.” Chatterjee
at the time of the initial
threat and now is a UN
official, repeatedly promoted
under and then by his father
in law. Chatterjee is immunity
from legal process, but got
information about war crimes
in Sri Lanka and nepotism
removed from the Internet (and
even archives) by legalistic
threat. It is to this
still-continuing low that Ban
Ki-moon and his family have
brought the UN. We'll have
more on this.
Sri
Lanka war crimes was also the
topic of threats made to Inner
City Press in the UN, that if
it did not remove reporting
from Internet (it did not) it
would be thrown out of the UN
(it was, by Ban Ki-moon and
his censorship alliance and
head of communications
Cristina Gallach, with
continued restrictions to
"minders" inside the UN).
We'll have more on this as
well.
***
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