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UN GATE / SDNY COURT, March 16 –  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 16 a half an hour before the delayed noon briefing by Stephane "French Whine" Dujarric to a near empty room in which he said he'll now take text questions from "UNCA members, uh, resident correspondents" - that is, not the many world journalists who don't sleep in their offices in the UN, like the FT, Guardian, etc., 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 16-1: On the Coronavirus Covid-19, AGAIN: please immediately state the conditions and mitigation for the lay off of all Delegates Dining Room staff which Inner City Press reported yesterday after being contacted by staff complaining there is no mitigation of economic harm. Separately, has SG Guterres been tested for COVID-19? 

March 16-2: On Cameroon, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on Fonkwah Roland, a medical doctor at the Aduck Health Center in Fundong, North West region has been jailed in Fundong Gendarmerie Brigade?  Roland was picked up last Thursday by security forces as he returned from a meeting in the regional capital, Bamenda where they strategized on ways to combat the coronavirus pandemic.  “The gendarmes suspected him of being a" separatist... And AGAIN on the Biya governments expulsion and now public trashing of the now-gone UN OCHA official in Bamenda, Andrew Jack Pendleton? Biya's minister Atanga Nji has publicly denounced Pendleton for his mild comments on the government's slaughter of civilians at Ngarbuh. Yet again,  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 16-3: On the DRC and total lack of trust in the UN, what are the comment and actions of SG Guterres on reports that "civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are resisting the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers despite imminent attacks by rebel groups in the region.  The resistance is the aftermath of a fallout between residents in the town of Beni and the UN Mission for Stabilisation in the Congo (MONUSCO).  This after residents accused the peacekeepers of failure to protect them from repeated attacks" 

March 16-3a: On Qatar, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres on that nine migrant labourers working on the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar died in 2019, the “supreme committee” organising the event has announced, bringing the number of deaths on World Cup projects to 34, since construction began six years ago.  31 of the deaths, including the nine who died last year, are classified as “non-work related”, a term the supreme committee uses to describe deaths that largely occur off the worksite, most of which are attributed to sudden and unexplained cardiac or respiratory failure.    

March 16-4: On UN bribery, again, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on the March 11 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 16-5: 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 16-6: Immediately describe the role of Angola and the dos Santos family in the campaign of Antonio Guterres to become UNSG. 

March 16-7: 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 16-8: 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 16-9: 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 16-10: On press freedom and China, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres and separately USG Melissa Fleming on that Li Qiaochu, a Beijing-based women’s rights and labor activist, tweeted on January 24 about the Chinese authorities’ attempted coverup of the COVID-19 outbreak: “Let’s remember the pain… and the lives that left us without even being tallied.… Let’s use civic engagement to pursue those responsible for trampling lives.” Early on the morning of February 16, Beijing authorities took Li into custody. It is unclear where she is now and with what crime she has been charged.

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