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UN Again Calls Visa
Meeting Closed to Media, Canned Press Release Censored by UN Legal
Office
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner
City Press at the UN:
News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, April 24 -- The
public
and the press will be excluded from
meetings at the UN about visa denials and diplomats' immunities from
taxes and
other local laws because "sensitive information is provided," the
spokesman for General Assembly president Srgjan Kerim responded on Thursday.
The
ruling, in the form of a statement
attributed to Andreas Mavroyiannis as chairman of the UN's Host Country
Committee, calls into question not only Kerim's and Mavroyiannis'
claimed
commitment to transparency, but also the completeness of the UN
Department of
Public Information (DPI) press releases about the meetings, and who
screens and
censors them. Inner City Press asked if the Chairman, who is Ambassador
of
Cyprus to the UN, reviews the press releases to ensure that the
sensitive
information is not provided to the public.
A
representative of the
Cyprus
Mission, Polly Ioannou, committed on Thursday afternoon to get -- from
the UN
Office of Legal Affairs, she said -- the legal basis for closing the
meeting,
but nothing was provided by midnight Thursday. Nor had OLA chief
Nicolas Michel
responded to an e-mail query two days earlier about the arbitrary
closing of
the meeting by his staffer Surya Sinha. Ms. Ioannou said she was unable
to
identify any sensitive information that had been discussed in Tuesday's
session, and that it is the UN Office of Legal Affairs, and not the
Committee
chairman, who in charge of vetting the press releases to delete
information.
While on Thursday spokesman Tisovszky said he would ask Amb.
Mavroyiannis to
come and do a briefing, and Ms. Ioannou said he would say yes, it now
appears
that both the rationale for the exclusion, and responsibility for
deleting
information from the resulting press release, lie with the Office of
Legal
Affairs. So where is it's chief, Nicolas Michel? Developing.
On Tuesday, as a meeting on questions of access to the United States
and the UN
began, the Committee Secretary, Surya Sinha of the UN's Office of Legal
Affairs, approached this reporter. "Inner City Press? You have to
leave."
Inner City Press went and got a representative of the UN's Media
Accreditation and Liaison Unit, who came and told the staff that the
press
should be let in. No, the staffer said, adding that the UN 's own
Department of
Public Information was allowed to attend, and would issue a press
release.
"But then the meeting isn't even closed," it was pointed out.
"What's the point of excluding independent, non-UN journalists?"
This same question was asked at the noon briefing, and in
response,
Ban Ki-moon's Spokesperson Michele Montas defended the exclusion of
independent
press and said that DPI's press releases could omit information, so
that those
present could "exchange that type of information in that type of
meeting." This defense, while still on video (here from Minute 16:50,
was
excised from the transcript,
to which was added:
[The
Spokesperson later clarified that the meeting in question had in
fact been
an open meeting.]
But this was taken back
two days later, when GA spokesman
Tisovszky read
out what he called "a statement of clarification by the Chairman of the
Committee on Relations with the Host Country, Ambassador Andreas D.
Mavroyiannis, regarding attendance by the press at meetings of the
Committee." Tisovszky said the statement "reads as follows:
It
has
been the long-standing
practice of the Host Country Committee, given the nature of its work
where
frank exchanges are had between representatives and often sensitive
information
is provided, that the press and members of the public are not permitted
to
attend. DPI staff, who are of course members of the Secretariat,
do
provide a summary. The reason why we do not indicate in the
Journal that
the meeting is closed is due to the varying interpretations of that
word.
In this regard, it is within the authority of the Chairman under the
guidance
of the Committee to call a meeting closed to the public and press.
Meetings of the Host Country Committee, in addition to the members of
the
Committee, are also open to any other delegation of a Member State that
wishes
to attend as an observer. At the beginning of the meeting, the
Chairman
indicates to the Committee those delegations that have signaled their
wish to
attend as observers and seeks the Committee's approval to admit them to
the meeting.
He also seeks the Committee's approval, in the interest of efficiency,
to agree
to the participation of delegates of other Member States that arrive
later
during the meeting’s deliberations without interrupting the
deliberations to
individually decide on their participation.
The Committee has not received any formal requests by the press to
attend. It is, however, possible that members of the press have
in the
past entered the meeting room without the Committee's knowledge.
In order
to avoid any doubt, at future meetings of the Committee, the Chairman
will make
a statement when opening the meeting that the meeting is not open to
members of
the press or the public.
The statement gave rise
to
numerous questions. From the transcript:
Inner City Press: First, the transcript of the
Tuesday briefing
includes a
notation that the correspondents were later told that the meeting was
open. So that is not true. What was the basis of that?
Spokesperson:
Where, which... This is the clarification.
Inner
City Press: First, the transcript of the Tuesday briefing
includes a
notation that the So the answer given Tuesday is no longer the case.
Spokesperson: This is why we have the clarification.
Anything
further on that, I think you should check with the Chair.
Inner
City Press: I wasn't aware until now that the DPI press releases
that
were put out on meetings, that they are explicitly not complete, i.e.
that they
have been asked that… the press release is essentially filtered
information of
what the UN wants to get out. Is there some way to mark press
releases as
"this is an accurate and full description of the meeting" and
"this is a partial, filtered version of the meeting." Because
what you just said is: DPI writes it up, but they don't include
any
"sensitive" information. Is that the case with all DPI press
releases? How do we know when DPI is telling the whole truth and
when it
is telling half the truth?
Spokesperson:
First of all,
on this issue of the Committee. What we have here is a summary
press
release. You usually have two kinds of press releases, if my
memory
serves me correctly. One which tends to be a more or less
speaker-by-speaker run-down of a meeting. And then you have this
version,
where you have a summary of the issues happened and discussed.
Both are
accurate and both serve, not as an official document, but simply as an
orientation, as an information tool for you. And you and any one
of you
are perfectly welcome to follow up on additional information from any
of the
Members speaking or from us as spokespeople. So I don’t agree
that you
have filtered press releases or vetted press releases or whatever.
Inner
City Press: In the
statement that you read, you said that the independent press cannot
attend the
meeting, because it is so sensitive. But DPI can attend the
meeting and
produce a press release not including the sensitive information.
Spokesperson:
DPI can
attend simply to give a summary of what happened, so that it gives you
an
orientation of what went down. But as I said, as regards all the
details
on this clarification, please follow up…
Inner
City Press: Does the
Chairman review the press release before it is made public to make sure
that it
doesn’t include the sensitive information. How do people know
what is too
sensitive for the press to see?
Spokesperson:
I don’t know
whether the Chairperson reviews the press release, but this is again
something
you can take up with the Ambassador and see whether he does that.
Inner
City Press: Mr. Kerim,
given what he said about transparency and openness at the opening of
the
Assembly, does he agree with the decision that meetings of the
Committee on
Relations with the Host Country should be -- I attended a number of
them...
Spokesperson:
Yes, he has
talked about openness and transparency and making it available as much
as
possible to the press. But at the same time, he is under the
guidance of
the Member States. If you have a Committee meeting with Member
States deciding
and expressing the wish –- in this case through the Chair –- that they
would
rather have a meeting closed, or still closed, but partial information
provided
through a press release, that is the way things go. And you had
that also
with the President, for example, when one of the first things that in
fact came
up with regard to transparency –- open and closed meetings –- is when
the
General Committee met at the very beginning of the sixty-second
session.
Again, that was one of those issues where this same question that you
just
asked was asked. And that is the answer we have. As much as
possible, yes, but it is something that is ultimately decided by the
Member
States. But as I have said so many times: the ultimate
decision on
all of these issues are always held in an open meeting of the General
Assembly
plenary, when the final decisions are taken on issues, whether it is on
the
report of the Committee on Host Country Relations or any other
committees. There is an ultimate transparency there.
Question:
Can we get a
specific… The Chairperson was referring to a long-standing did you say
precedent? Is there a specific document he is referring to?
Because
this can have a chilling effect, when we find out that we have been
honored
guests of these Committee meetings and then all of them
[inaudible]. Can
we get a specific document or precedent?
Spokesperson:
As I said,
since this is a clarification from the Chairperson, I would beg you to
follow
up with the Chairperson himself.
Inner
City Press: Could he be a
guest at noon? Is there some formal way we could actually have an
answer
to these questions?
Spokesperson:
I'll
certainly convey that, and we’ll see where it goes.
On
Thursday afternoon, the Cyprus
Mission's Polly Ioannou said that the Chairman will come to do a
briefing, and
that only OLA knows the rationale for the exclusion, and is responsible
to
vetting the press releases and deleting information. So where in OLA
chief
Nicolas Michel? Watch this site.
* * *
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