In Other Media-eg New Statesman, AJE, FP, Georgia, NYT,  Azerbaijan, CSM Click here to contact us     .

By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - CJR - PFT

UN GATE / SDNY COURT, March 11 –  Inner City Press on 5 July 2018 was banned from entering the UN, two day after it was physically removed from conducting interviews outside meeting about the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' $6.7 billion budget.

  Then Guterres' Department of Global Communication, run by Melissa Fleming, issued a letter banning Inner City Press from the UN - for life. With no due process, no right of appeal.  Guterres has put the UN in the US Press Freedom Tracker, here. Guterres' Spokesman Stephane Dujarric falsely promised on camera that he would be answering banned Inner City Press' questions - but see below.

     On March 11 before the noon briefing by Stephane "French Whine" Dujarric where he fields "teeny tiny" in-house questions, and one about a dead UN Security officer, Inner City Press submitted yet more questions, including why it continues to be lawlessly banned from entering to ask questions in person. Inner City Press has asked:

March 11-1: On UN bribery, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on today's appellate argument by convicted UN briber Patrick Ho of CEFC China Energy in the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals? Why has SG Guterres not amended his disclosure covering 2016 which omit payments from Gulbenkian Foundation which tried to sell its oil company to CEFC? Separately, why is there no disclosure of USG Melissa Fleming among the most recent public financial disclosures? 

March 11-2: On Coronavirus, confirm closure of UNIS and Pollard email; immediately explain if UN is testing or stopping or specifically speaking with diplomats and others from China, Japan, South Korea, Italy and Iran / having visited there in last 14 days and if not, why not? 

March 11-3: On Cameroon, since each of you has refused to answer banned Inner City Press questions about Paul Biya's army's killing of civilians in the Anglophone regions / Ambazonia, please immediately disclose whose question was cited by Stephane Dujarric in yesterday's noon briefing as having been asked triggering condemnation of one-death bombing attributed, rightly or wrongly, to non Paul Biya forces? How is your approach not propaganda, censorship and a cover up of the Biya's government's mass killings?  March 11-4: Again, immediately confirm or deny that Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed is running for African Union Commission Chairperson, and if you do not deny, how much UN / public money has been used toward this end. 

March 11-5: On corruption and Angola, on which you refused to answer yesterday, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres on the Luanda Leaks exposure of Isabel dos Santos of Angola, and as Inner City Press has repeatedly asked, what are his comments and action on the repeated retweeting of Isabel dos Santos' denials by his close staffer Aguinaldo Baptista? After, for example, exposure of the corrupt urban development project near Luanda for which some 3,000 families were driven from their homes to make way for the development? And now after The Portuguese bank EuroBic has announced it will end its business relationship with Africa's richest woman, Isabel dos Santos. 

March 11-6: Immediately describe the role of Angola and the dos Santos family in the campaign of Antonio Guterres to become UNSG.  March 11-7: On UN sexual exploitation and abuse - alleged - as Inner City Press requested before noon briefing on March 9, immediately provide all if-asked / further information immediately provide the if-asked information about the new sex abuse cases data dumped at 11 am on March 9, involving sexual abuse by peacekeeper from Cameroon in CAR, Pakistan in Darfur, Tanzania in DRC,  and still UN rape in DRC by Guatemala "peacekeeper," and abuse by Senegal in Haiti, and Gabon and Mauritania in CAR, etc and as Inner City Press asked in writing in 2019 without response, the if-asked information for the report of UN rape in Darfur data dumped to Conduct and Discipline website on the morning of January 17 and the "if asked" information about the two new cases of sexual exploitation in CAR by Cameroonian UN "Police" that were put online after 5 pm on December 30 (a day when you refused to answer 7 questions including on previous UN rapes), and the (Dec 19) rape case by a UN Volunteer in DRC in June 2019 - what nationality? What's been done for the victim(s)? and the Dec 9 sex abuse cases in CAR by Gabon, DRC and Morocco UN "peacekeepers, and the Dec g  about the Office of the Special Envoy for the Sahel, and the two more November 26, 3 pm cases of sexual exploitation in CAR by Cameroon troops in September 2019 (!)

March 11-8: On SG Guterres' Town Hall in Geneva, on which you refused Inner City Press' Dec 20 question, what is your summary of what SG Guterres said given that Inner City Press has now publishing more of it? Please explain SG Guterres' statement that interns should not (ever) be paid, and how this is not create unfair advantage for the most affluent?

March 11-9: As previously and repeated asked, where has UNSG Antonio Guterres been for the past week(s), and how much public money has he spent? Is he going directly to and from Pakistan? Previously from Addis? Or any stop overs? At what cost? Now, immediately disclose any and all costs to the UN including UN Security on the New York trip by Catarina Vaz Pinto Guterres on February 27 - March 1 (or longer). 

March 11-10: On press freedom and Algeria, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres and separately USG Melissa Fleming on the arrest of journalist and press freedom advocate Khaled Drareni, who has been in custody since March 7?  A national prosecutor at the Sidi M'Hamed Court in Algiers ordered Drareni to remain in detention pending an investigation into allegations of “assembly without a permit...

***

Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron.

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
SDNY Press Room 480, front cubicle
500 Pearl Street, NY NY 10007 USA

Mail: Box 20047, Dag Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017

Reporter's mobile (and weekends): 718-716-3540

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

 Copyright 2006-2020 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com for