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UN
Department of Public Info Faces
Budget Cuts, Seven Weeks After
Doubled Down on
Censorship
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
December 12 – Among the parts
of the UN facing budget cuts
for waste is the Department of
Public Information,
increasingly a propaganda arm
which, as if as a sidelight,
engages in censorship of the
investigative Press. New DPI
chief Alison Smale's swearing
in ceremony was closed to the
Press; she has still not even
responded to Inner City Press'
three petitions for review of
its eviction and restriction
for reporting on corruption at
the UN. Meanwhile, the UN
Budget Committee head for the
year, the Cameroonian
Ambassador who joined DPI in
its censorship after Inner
City Press asked about abuses
by his president Paul Biya,
told Inner City Press it will
all be done by December 22.
We'll see. The UN delivered a
threat
to Inner City Press to
“review” it accreditation on
October 20 at 5 pm. The UN
official who signed the letter,
when Inner City Press went to
ask about the undefined
violation of live-streaming
Periscope video at a photo op
by UN Secretary General
Antonio Guterres, had already
left, minutes after sending
the threat. This comes two
days after Inner City Press asked Guterres about the
UN inaction on threatened
genocide in Cameroon, and the
UN claimed
Guterres hadn't heard the
15-second long question.
It also
comes after Alison Smale the
head of the Department of
Public Information which would
“review” Inner City Press'
accreditation has ignored threeseparatepetitions
from Inner City Press in the
six weeks she has been in the
job, urging her to remove
restrictions on Inner City
Press' reporting which hinder
its coverage of the UN's
performance in such crises as
Yemen,
Kenya,
Myanmar,
and the Central African
Republic where Guterres
travels next week, with
Smale's DPI saying its
coverage of the trip will be a
test of its public relations
ability. But the UN official
who triggered the complaint is
Maher Nasser, who filled in
for Smale before she arrived.
His complaint is that audio of
what he said to Inner City
Press as it staked out the
elevators in the UN lobby
openly recording, as it has
for example
with Cameroon's Ambassador
Tommo Monthe, here,
was similarly published.
A UN “Public Information”
official is complaining about
an article, and abusing his
position to threaten to review
Inner City Press'
accreditation. The UN has
previously been called
out for targeting Inner
City Press, and for having no
rules or due process.
But the UN is entirely
UNaccountable, impunity on
censorship as, bigger picture,
on the cholera it brought to
Haiti. And, it seems, Antonio
Guterres has not reformed or
reversed anything. This threat
is from an official involved
in the last round of
retaliation who told Inner
City Press on Twitter to be
less "negative" about the UN -
amid inaction on the mass
killing in Cameroon - and who
allowed pro-UN hecking of
Inner City Press' questions
about the cholera the UN
brought to Haiti and the Ng
Lap Seng /John Ashe UN bribery
scandal which resulted in six
guilty verdicts. We'll have
more on this.
***
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