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UN GATE / SDNY COURT, March 24 –  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 24 before a UN noon briefing by Stephane "French Whine" Dujarric from his penthouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, video here, Inner City Press submitted yet more questions, by email and WhatsApp including asking the basis on which it continues to be lawlessly banned from entering to ask questions in person. Inner City Press asked:

March 24-1: On Cameroon, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on the holding of an "election" in NW and SW during this Coronavirus crisis? Why did Guterres "take note" of Guinea vote, but not Cameroon? Yet again,  immediately disclose whose question was cited by Stephane Dujarric in the in-person 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? And, on Coronavirus, a medical staff in Yaounde says “the figures the Minister has given do not match with the real figures.”  Among the many contaminated he says include health workers in facilities hosting COVID-19 patients. “The issue of the President of the National Assembly being contaminated is true,” he says, citing other government officials and some of their family members.     “Presently, I’m not exaggerating, the true figures are about 560… and it is just the start” he explains. Official government figures, however, remain at 66 

March 24-2: On the Coronavirus Covid-19, immediately state SG Guterres' view of this photo of UN diplomats, leaked to and published by banned Inner City Press, here. 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. On the other hand, please immediately respond to this: On 12 March 2020, UN Office for Disarmament Affairs released a P-3 political affairs officer temporary vacancy.  This announcement is extraordinary when most of the conferences and projects are put on hold. The job description and requirement criteria, which ought to be specific and tailored to the position, is so surprisingly generic and basic that 100,000 people in the Secretariat Building fit the requirement.   Since 10 March, 2020, a total of three P-3 temporary vacancies in New York have been released, including this one. Disarmament has been in stalemate for decades. Let's keep our fingers crossed that breakthrough can be made through ODA's recruitment at this crucial juncture.     'Rumors' say that the position belongs to Mr. Q, a Chinese, whose current JPO (Junior Professional Officer) contract will end in early April 2020." 

March 24-2a: On China, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres on that three Chinese human rights lawyers, Mr. Ding Jiaxi, Mr. Zhang Zhongshun and Mr. Dai Zhenya, have been held by authorities in a form of detention called Residential Surveillance in a Designated Location (RSDL) since they were arrested for attending an informal weekend gathering in the city of Xiamen. At the gathering, they discussed the situation of civil society and politics in China with other lawyers and activists 

March 24-3: On Guinea, what are the comments and actions of SG Guterres, beyond "taking note," on that opposition activists in Guinea say at least 10 people have been killed in street clashes during Sunday's controversial referendum on a new constitution.  Critics said the vote was a ploy by President Alpha Condé to stay in power beyond his mandate.  The deaths occurred in the capital, Conakry, where police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators.  Opposition supporters attacked the police, burned polling centres and destroyed voting equipment.  Mr Condé, 82, insists the new constitution will bring about positive reforms, especially for women.  Many people say they are worried about the vote taking place during the coronavirus outbreak. 

March 24-3a: 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. The killings in the village of Ogossagou occurred hours after village leaders alerted government officials that the Malian army had vacated a post created following the March 23, 2019 massacre of 150 people in the same village, and an hour after a United Nations peacekeeper convoy had passed through. How is this not UN failure? 

March 24-3b: 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 24-3c: 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 24-4: 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 24-5: 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 24-6: Immediately describe the role of Angola and the dos Santos family in the campaign of Antonio Guterres to become UNSG. 

March 24-7: 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 24-8: 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 24-9: 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 24-10: On press freedom and Bangladesh, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres and separately USG Melissa Fleming on that Shafiqul Islam Kajol, a leading Bangladeshi photojournalist and newspaper editor, went missing on March 10, a day after defamation charges were filed against him by an influential ruling party lawmaker.  CCTV footage released later by the international human rights group Amnesty International showed that a group of unidentified men approached Kajol’s motorbike and appeared to tamper with it on the day the journalist was last seen before his disappearance  

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