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UN Undermines
Kiswahili, DPI in
Disrespect to Africa As
Guterres Flies to AU,
Smale Censors
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS,
January 25 – How lawless, some
even say racist, is today's UN
and its Department of Public
Information? Kiswahili jobs
that the General Assembly
specified to DPI must be
returned and retained are
nevertheless being eliminated,
DPI whistleblowers have
complained to Inner City
Press. The results is not only
the loss of employment and US
visas for Africans, but they
say a steep decline in the
provision of information in
Kiswahili. One account which
was "merged into" DPI's
non-Africa specific account
had a drop off in followers
from 255,000 to 90,000. But,
the sources say, Under
Secretary General Alison
Smale's DPI has misled
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres, who Smale so often
cites for her anti-staff
moves, telling him the overall
account is up to 3 million.
"It's a fraud," one source
said. "And it's a real
'sh*ithole' disrespect to
Kenya and Tanzania and
countries like it, by the UN."
Others have noted the irony,
as Guterres flies off to the
African Union summit in Addis
Ababa, avoiding Donald Trump
in Davos. Inner City Press has
sought a response, including
to the below, directly from
Alison Smale, the former NYT
Berlin editor who previously
ignored detailed written
questions in September 2017
when she arrived to take over
DPI as Guterres' "Global
Communicator." Inner City
Press asked Smale, "beyond the
questions asked to date in the
UN noon briefings, I would
like you to explain DPI's
compliance with the most
recent budget resolution's
Paragraph 167, to explain what
has happened to the Kiswahili
(and Portuguese) posts, and
more generally to state what
you are doing about the
complaints raised to Inner
City Press by DPI staff,"
below. The cited Paragraph
167, adopted by the UN Fifth
(Budget) Committee at 2 am on
Christmas Eve with Inner City
Press the only media bothering
to cover it, but still
restricted, reads: "167.
Requests the Secretary-General
to ensure that the two posts
from the Kiswahili Radio Unit
and the two posts from the
Portuguese Radio Unit are
deployed for the purposes
originally approved." The UN
Secretariat reportedly tried
to get the paragraph out,
first by negotiation and then
by stealth; now DPI officials
are said to refer to it as "bullsh*t,"
another "sh*thole" echo.
Questions have also been
raised separately to Guterres
and his Deputy Amina J.
Mohammed. We'll have more on
this, and on Guterres' UN's
inaction on Cameroon and
mis-steps in Kenya, the
undisclosed sending of
Obasanjo and Fore's UNICEF's
strange youth empowerment
move, Inner City Press'
coverage of which was picked
up by the Star
and Standard.
Back on January 17 when UN
Guterres held a "Global Town
Hall Meeting," the meeting was
closed but Inner City Press
came in early to stake it out:
to stand in front and ask the
attendees what they think of
Guterres' performance. Unlike
other correspondents at the
UN, Inner City Press is
required to have a minder to
do such stakeouts on the UN's
second floor - and on January
17 at the appointed hour, 8:45
am, there was no minder
available. Periscope video here.
Finally it was possible, after
Guterres passed by and started
his pitch. At his press
conference the day before he
twice said, "there were no
budget cuts in relation to the
regular budget of the United
Nations." This is contrary to
what Inner City Press found
when it, as the only media
present, covered the UN budget
endgame through 2 am on
Christmas Eve. It is also
contradicted by this statement
exclusively to Inner City
Press from staff, edited to
preserve anonymity: "What
I feel the public or even the missions
themselves don't understand, are the
repercussions of the proposed cuts. The Fifth
Committee members slashed the budget left and
right, without thinking for one second what it
actually meant. The first thing to go as a
result, is one of your favorite topics:
transparency. Based on what has been said
internally, they are looking to cut down on
multilingualism and language accessibility
within DPI production, leaving English as a
lingua franca (!).
This means that missions interested in staying
up to date on UN news and events will not be
able to access information in their language,
if that language is indeed French,
Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or Russian [Ed's
note: or Kiswahli - or Portuguese,
which some think Guterres would take note of.]
Nor will the public. As you may imagine, this
raises a serious issue in regards to
transparency and multilingualism. The founding
values of the UN were set in place in order to
make the body a fair playing field for all. By
making information available only in English,
what message will that send? How will it
affect the missions? How will the UN be able
to forge a closer relationship with the public
around the world? The bias will shift heavily
in favor of developed countries, who will have
the initial access to all information due to
linguistic advantages. These talks
on cuts are happening behind closed doors and
only potentially affected employees are being
informed. The missions and the public won't
know until it's too late to do anything about
it, unless somebody holds them accountable
now. But now, you know.
And I hope that disseminating this information
and holding those in power at the higher
echelons of DPI accountable, will help
preserve access to information -- which is
after all, a human right. We hope to see you
there too." But the meeting was closed, and
minder only belatedly available. We'll have
more on this. The day before
on January 16 when Guterres
came to give his speech for
2018 to the UN General
Assembly, the Press was
blocked from staking it out by
the censorship restricts he
has in place. Periscope here,
UNresponded to letter here.
Once inside the Trusteeship
Council Chamber, Guterres said
he had 12 points. One was
Myanmar, although he did not
even mention the mandate on
his to name an envoy
to the country, which he has
not done. Another was North
Korea; he confirmed he will go
to the opening ceremony of the
PyeongChang
Olympics. He lumped all of
Africa into just one of his 12
points, despite the Continent
being 60% of the UN Security
Council's agenda. He did not
mention Cameroon
or other long time family
ruled countries like Togo and
Gabon that his envoys are
propping up. His Deputy Amina
J. Mohammed, who is in “her”
Nigeria silent on the
abductions there, was not
present; her chief staff was,
but as before, no response to
emails or questions about the
4000 rosewood
signature. Guterres hasn't
even started an audit of the
UN bribery indictments
of Patrick Ho and Cheikh Gadio
and regarding China Energy
Fund Committee brought
November 20 in the Southern
District of New York. Guterres
said he has zero tolerance for
sexual harassment but has done
none, and his spokesman
Stephane Dujarric hasn't even
answered Inner City Press on,
the case
of Frank La Rule at UNESCO.
The UN like UNESCO claims it
is for free speech and press
freedom, but no answer on The
Rappler; nor has DPI chief
Alison Smale even answered
Inner City Press' and the Free
UN Coalition for Access'
three petitions
about even handed media access
and content neutral rules, or
this
petition. Guterres is slated
to take, selected by Dujarric,
questions at 12:45. Watch this
site. The spring thaw in
Antonio Guterres' first year
as UN Secretary General, in
March and April, began to
reveal hypocrisy. A small but
telling example was when,
after Guterres called on
people all over the world to
turn off their lights for
Earth Hour, Inner City Press found
the lights on at the
UN-owned mansion on Sutton
Place where Guterres lives.
At first the UN
refused to answer Inner City
Press where Guterres was - Lisbon
- then accused it of “monitoring
the residence.” It's called
journalism: with the UN
refusing to disclose even what
country Guterres is in,
checking the residence is the
only way. The UN also refuses
to disclose how much these
Lisbon trips cost the global
taxpayers, for example how
many UN Security officials are
taken, where they stay and for
how much.
Likewise
Guterres' 2016 financial disclosure
differed significantly from
what he filed as head of UNHCR
in 2013. This has yet to be
explained. In April Guterres
was petitioned to replace the
UN's pro-Saudi Yemen
envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh
Ahmed. But when Inner City
Press asked, Guterres'
spokespeople refused to even
confirm receipt of the letter.
This happened on
a petition by staff
too, about retaliation by
Francis Gurry the head of the
UN World Intellectual Property
Organization, whose assistance
to North Korea's cyanide
patents Guterres did not act
on.
In late April,
Guterres did nothing as
Tanzania expelled
his resident coordinator, a
far cry from his knee-jerk
defense later in the year -
continuing on December
27 - of the 4000
rosewood signatures by his
Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed.
Sustainable development? Try
hypocrisy, and censorship and
restriction of the Press which
covers it - and Cameroon, here. We'll have more
on this.
In Antonio
Guterres' first two months as
UN Secretary General, the
longstanding Cyprus talks
began to fall apart,
and Guterres stood silent
as Burundi, for example, banned
access by UN officials.
Guterres ignored a protest by
whistleblowers against Francis
Gurry of the UN World
Intellectual Property
Organization, and that UN
agency's work on North Korea's
cyanide patents.
He did
nothing about a UN waste dump
exposed
by Inner City Press in the
Central African Republic,
despite his predecessor Ban
Ki-moon's record with waste in
Haiti and elsewhere. While he
announced that Kenyan troops
would head back to South Sudan
to join UN Peacekeeping, he
appointed the fifth
Frenchman in a row to head
this DPKO, Jean-Pierre
Lacroix.
Meanwhile he was
rebuffed in his attempt to
appoint Fayyad to head the
UN's Libya mission, perhaps
explaining his refusal later
in the year to take a single
press question after reading
out his canned statement on
Jerusalem. In a harbinger of
his approach to UN corruption
and (non) reform, his UN was
named as not providing
requested documents in the first
UN bribery case, of Ng Lap
Seng. (In the second case, of
Patrick Ho and Cheikh Gadio,
Guterres has yet to even
launch an audit).
February 2017
ended with a seeming second
wind, the belated arrival of
Guterres deputy Amina J.
Mohammed. Inner City Press was
throughout constructive;
it would later emerge that
during the delay Mohammed
signed 4000 certificates for
endangered Nigerian and
Cameroonian rosewood already
exported to China, something
Guterres has refused to
investigate despite a petition
with 92,000 requests.
Guterres' first
interaction with UN staff was
a Town Hall meeting on January
9. Even though it was on the
UN's public website, when
Inner City Press live-streamed
it on Periscope
for the impacted public to see
it received a threat that this
violated unspecified
UN's guidelines. This has been
a pattern in Guterres' first
year: threats to Press for
unspecified violations, such
as that of Maher
Nasser on October 20,
and a total failure to respond
or reform by Nasser's boss, Alison
Smale. Ultimately,
Guterres is responsible.
***
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