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 20 –  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 20 before a faux press briefing by Stephane "French Whine" Dujarric from his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan - he said he was taking questions on WhatsApp, on which he now blocks Inner City Press and its questions on Guterres' complicity in Cameroon genocide and Coronavirus crisis -- Inner City Press submitted yet more questions, by email, Periscope, text and by WhatsApp including to Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez at 917-226-7816, since the "lead" UN Spokesperson Dujarric at 917-622-7652 (these are spokespeople of a publicly funded organization) blocks the Press, including asking the basis on which it continues to be lawlessly banned from entering to ask questions in person. Inner City Press asked:

 March 20-1: On Cameroon, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on that residents in Okwala, a village in Lower Bafut, North West Region are in bushes following an early-morning invasion of the village by soldiers. Gunshots are being heard in the area at the moment. Sources in Bafut say houses have also been set on fire? And on the government's use of deadly force in Bangolan in the North West region and more houses set ablaze as soldiers entered the village? 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 the 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 20-2: 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 after being contacted by staff complaining there is no mitigation of economic harm. Also, now, provide all information on the correspnodent who attended the UN noon briefing and spent time at the Delegates Lounge and in the press area on the third floor on March 12. Have you informed the local authorities? What steps have been taken?  Separately, has SG Guterres been tested for COVID-19?

March 20-2a: Should Guinea be holding the referendum for Alpha Conde this Sunday?? Despite calls by the World Health Organization (WHO) for countries in Africa to take urgent steps to prepare for coronavirus, the authorities in Guinea are going ahead with a referendum and parliamentary vote on Sunday. 

March 20-3: On Mali, what is the UN's response to that an ethnic militia in Mali massacred over 35 villagers on February 14, 2020 after government troops left the area

 March 20-3a: 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 20-3b: 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

March 20-4: 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 20-5: 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 20-6: Immediately describe the role of Angola and the dos Santos family in the campaign of Antonio Guterres to become UNSG. 

March 20-7: 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 20-8: 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 20-9: 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 20-10: On press freedom and Egypt, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres and separately USG Melissa Fleming on that  Egyptian authorities arrested 4 prominent women on March 18, 2020 as they protested to seek the release of unjustly detained prisoners over fears of COVID-19 virus. The women were apparently demonstrating peacefully in downtown Cairo.  They are Laila Soueif, a Cairo University professor and mother of jailed activist Alaa Abdel Fattah; her sister, Ahdaf Soueif, a novelist; her daughter, Mona Seif Abdel Fattah; and Rabab al-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo

***

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