At
UN
Attacks on
Media Event,
No Qs from
Media,
UNESCO DDG
& Ethiopia
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
November 3 --
When the UN
held its event
for the first
International
Day to End
Impunity for
Crimes against
Journalists
a
day late on
November 3,
not a single
question from
a journalist
was
taken.
Instead,
speaking from
the podium was
for example
UNESCO's
Deputy
Director
General Getachew
Engida of
Ethiopia,
a country
which
just sentenced
to three years
in jail
journalist
Temesgen
Desalegn.
This
journalist's
imprisonment,
for
“provocation,”
is hardly low
profile;
either is that
of the
Ethopian Zone
9 Bloggers.
But the
moderator,
UNESCO's
George
Papagiannis,
did not raise
the issue,
even
as he
purported to
read out
congratulatory
live-tweets
about the
event.
(IFEX
to its credit
did reply
to one of @InnerCityPress' tweets
questioning
the event and
how it was
run, here.
By another, it
was suggested
that maybe
Engida, even
with his many
UN system
posts, is a dissident
from Ethiopia.
But it does
not seem like
it: see
recent photo
here.)
Nor
did any of the
other
panelists
raise it: Joel
Simon of CPJ,
Greece's
Ambassador,
Columbia
University's
Agnes
Callamard. The
lone media
panelist, from
Al Arabiya,
spoke without
irony about
naming and
shaming
countries
which jail
critics for
mere tweets:
many in the
Gulf and
Arabian
Peninsula.
Inner
City Press as
media, and the
new Free
UN Coalition
for Access,
had
this question
ready:
“about
an
underpinning
to deadly
attacks on
journalist:
the idea that
they
are parties to
a conflict, or
can be
prosecuted for
their
reporting
on national
security. Can
the panel,
particularly
the Deputy
Director
General of
UNESCO,
comment on
Ethiopia
jailing
journalist
Temesgen
Desalegn for
three years
for
“provocation”?
Or, to be
fair, the
prosecutions
here in the US
of James
Rosen, James
Risen and
Barrett
Brown, set to
be sentenced
on November
24? Of the
breaking up of
meetings of
reporters in Sri
Lanka, a
country in
which
journalists
have been
killed or
“disappeared,”
as in the case
of Prageeth.
What is the
relation of
such
prosecutions
to the actual
killing of
journalists?”
But,
as noted, the
hour and a
half long
panel took not
a single
question
from a
journalist. At
the day's UN
noon briefing,
Inner City
Press
asked Ban
Ki-moon's
spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric if
Ban while in
Ethiopia
recently to
make it the
third largest
UN “duty
station”
had in any way
raised the
case of
journalist
Temesgen
Desalegn.
Apparently
not. This is
how the UN
works, or
doesn't.
, 
