UNcensored:
Ousted from the UN's Glass House
For Investigative Reporting
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
February 6 – From bringing
cholera to Haiti and lying
about it to two
ongoing bribery
cases to dropping the
Saudi-led Coalition from the
United Nations' Children and
Armed Conflict annex for
bombing Yemen, how did the UN
fall so far, so fast? This is
one story,
UNpacked.
"It was the fifth year
of the Syria war. I'd covered
each year of it from the
United Nations, like Libya and
Sri Lanka before that. This
Friday afternoon, February 19,
2016, Turkey's threat to
intervene in Syria was on the
UN Security Council's agenda.
From my
long time shared office,
S-303, I watched on in-house
EZTV the Security Council
stakeout until the first
Ambassadors showed up. I
headed down the escalator with
audio recorder and smart phone
ready to live-stream their
answers on Periscope. I had my
questions ready.
I leaned down to
swipe my UN ID card on the
turnstile -- but this time it
didn't work. The UN Security
officer on duty gestured for
me to come over. “I'll let you
through for now but you need
to go talk to MALU. There was
a guy here talking about you.”
MALU was the UN's Media
Accreditation and Liaison
Unit, from which I and other
correspondents had to request
a pass renewal each year. For
me, there had already been
several attempts to “review”
my accreditation -- the phrase
Voice of America used in its request --
or to condition
re-accreditation on more
friendly coverage of the UN.
I thanked the
officer and set up shop in the
Security Council stakeout
area. Once the Syria meeting
began, I went up the steps and
through the glass doors of
MALU's office. The acting head
of the office was in his
cubicle. “Somehow my pass
didn't work,” I told him. “I
want to find out why.”
“I'll look into
it,” he said. "Meet me up at
your office."
When
I went up the escalator I
found in front of the door of
my shared office five UN
Security officers.
“I have a letter for
you,” one said, handing me an
envelope. It had the UN seal
on it.
“I don't have
time for this,” I told him.
“You're not going
to read it? I really think you
should,” he said.
I tore open the
envelope and looked at the letter.
It was signed by Cristina
Gallach, the head of the UN
Department of Public
Information who'd taken over a
year ago but with whom I'd
almost never spoken, other
than to question
her about her links to the Ng
Lap Seng UN bribery
case. Some lines jumped
out at me: the incident
of January 29... UN
media accreditation
guidelines... turn in your
office key by five p.m...
“This is bogus, “
I said. I put the letter
down on the floor and took a
photo of it with my phone.
“I'm going to tweet this b.s.
letter out,” I said, hearing
my own voice quiver. “This
lady is out of her mind.”
“So are you
giving us the key?” an officer
asked.
“No,” I said.
“I'm going back down to do my
job, to cover the Syria
meeting.”
The first officer told
a second one to follow me
downstairs. From now on I
would have a minder.
And things would soon get worse."
***
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