UNcensored
2: Physically Ousted from UN,
First Amendment Stops at 1st Avenue
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Series started here
UNITED NATIONS,
February 7 –
For the Syria stakeout in
front of the UN Security
Council on February 19, 2016,
seemingly
my last one, I tried to
blend in. It wasn't easy with
a UN Security officer
following my every move.
But I
stood typing and tweeting, and
stepped up to the stakeout
railing each time someone came
to speak on the microphone. I
put two questions to Turkey's
ambassador, who always
traveled with a bodyguard
himself, then returned to my
laptop to transcribe them.
By then most of the
other reporters had left. A UN
Security supervisor came and
and told me, “So you'll be
leaving, eh?”
“I don't agree with any
of it,” I told him. “But I'm
trying to arrange for a van to
move some of my stuff from my
office. Just the most
important stuff. Not because I
accept being thrown out, but
because I don't trust this
place anymore.”
“Alright then,” the
supervisor said. “So you'll
get yourself a van.” He
walked away.
I did send out
some emails, including to Jose
Ramos Horta, who beyond the UN
job he had was a Nobel Peace
Prize winner. I told him I was
being thrown out, and to email
Cristina Gallach, who had
signed the letter.
To my surprise he wrote back
quickly and said he would.
By then two other
UN Security officer came
over. “Look,” one of
them told me, “don't make
trouble. I say this as your
friend. They have fifteen of
us on this. So just pack up
and live to fight another
day.”
I nodded. I was
wondering how Gallach could do
this, if a Nobel Peace Prize
winner was asking her about
it. Just to be sure, I plugged
in my phone and put it on the
riser next to me, filming and
live streaming the scene and
the replica of Picasso's
Guernica to the side of the
Security Council stakeout.
Ramos Horta
wrote back, saying that
Gallach told him I would still
have the same access as a
reporter, only not an office
anymore. He forwarded me her
response and said I could use
it:
“Dear mr Ramos-Horta,
Many thanks for your message
which allows me to inform you
about the decision I have
taken on the type of
accreditation that Mr Lee has
and will have in the future.
Recently mr Lee openly broke
the rules that guide all the
resident correspondents. After
careful consideration of the
internal report elevated to
me, I decided to continue
providing him with a press
pass that allows him to work
without any impediment at the
UN, as the vast majority of
journalists. What the UN
cannot do is to let him use an
space exclusively for
him, after the mentioned
events.
As you can see, mr Lee will
have a valid press card as
soon as he presents himself to
the accreditation premises.
Rest assured that I am the
first person to be interested
in ensuring totally free and
safe reporting from the UN HQ
and about the UN. This is what
mr. Lee will be able to do.”
Just then the Security
supervisor came back, this
time with eight other officers.
“That's it,” the
supervisor said. “Party's
over.”
One of the guards
grabbed my phone, yanked it
off the wire and pushed all
the buttons, trying to get it
to stop filming. Video
here.
“Hey don't touch my
phone!” I said.
“It's over,” the
supervisor said. He grabbed
the ID badge around my neck
and tore it off. “You're a
trespasser now. If you resist
we'll hand you over to NYPD.”
“I'm a journalist here
ten years,” I started to say.
“WERE a journalist,”
the supervisor said. “C'mon,
we're leaving.”
Another guard had
grabbed my laptop. “Let me go
upstairs and get my passport,”
I said. “And my coat.”
The guards were
pushing me toward the
escalator, the one heading
down, not up. One flight down
in in the lobby I saw two
members of the board of the
United Nations Correspondents
Association, which I'd quit
two years before after being
ordered by the
UN Correspondents
Assocaition's president
to take an article
off-line. “Great job,” I
yelled at them. “You're the
UN's Censorship Alliance.”
“More walking,
less talking,” the supervisor
said. I decided I should at
least know his name. So I
asked. Three times.
“I'm the Deputy Chief,”
he said.
“You're not going to
give your name?” I asked him.
“Even NYPD has to do that.”
He paused. “McNulty,”
he finally said. Audio
here. Then again the
pushing, out onto the traffic
circle, toward the guard booth
at the front which checked the
cars coming into the UN
garage.
“You know why they're
doing this,” I said to the
officer next to me, or all the
officers. “It's become of
corruption. A guy's been
indicted for paying bribes in
the UN and when I asked if Ban
Ki-moon's involved, suddenly
he's having you throw me out.”
“Enough, enough,”
McNulty said. We had arrived
at the guard booth, and one of
the guards opened the metal
gate out to First Avenue.
“I'm not leaving without
my phone,” I said. My mind was
swimming.
Audio here.
“We'll give that to you
once you're out,” McNulty
said. And with that, pushed me
out the gate. I saw my
backpack thrown on the ground,
with my laptop on it. Someone
handed me my phone and
suddenly the gate was locked.
To the side I saw
the Voice of America which as
they tried
earlier to get me out of the
UN I'd told that to use
US taxpayers' money to try to
get an American investigative
journalist thrown out of the
UN might be a problem.
“That's a threat,” she
told me.
“It's just a statement
of the law,” I'd told her.
“It's in the First Amendment.”
But the First
Amendment, I'd found, ends at
First Avenue.
***
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