| As Ann Charles of Baltic
Review Passes Away Here Are Her UNanswered
Questions in Now Shut UN
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- CJR -
PFT
UN GATE / SDNY
COURT, April 17 – Ann Charles
for decades attended United
Nations press briefing and
when she would ask her
detailed, written-out
questions about the Baltics
and more recently Ukraine,
they would usually not be
answered.
Here was a sample
exchange, from 5 January 2017:
Question:
Ann Charles, Baltic
Review. Do you expect
the new UN Secretary‑General,
António Guterres, who said he
will focus on peace for 2017,
or even Sweden, which is part
of the Baltic Sea region and
now holds the presidency of
the Security Council, to say
anything about Russian
aggression in the Baltic
States?
Spokesman
Stephane Dujarric: You
know, as for Sweden, I think
you'd have to ask them.
I have no particular comment
to make.
On 16 April 2020
holding a closed briefing from
his Upper East Side penthouse
apartment amid the COVID-19
pandemic the UN's role in
which in South Sudan and
elsewhere he has refused to
answer questions about,
Dujarric said: "In this
virtual room, I can’t see all
your faces together, but if I
could right now, I’d look to
my right to see one more time
the seat where our friend and
colleague Ann Charles would
sit. I
am sad to report that Ann, who
had been a long-time reporter
for the Baltic Review, has
passed away... Okay.
Let's now go to your questions
for which I need my glasses."
Inner City
Press notes, without rose
colored glasses, that Ann Charles-Zikaras
studied photography under
French photographer Jacques
Hutzler, head of the
photography department at the
Fashion Institute of
Photography, and completed a
course in travel photography
at the School of Visual Arts
in New York
City. In
2004, the UNSRC Photographic
Society presented 80 of her
travel photos in the UN's
checkerboard floored South
Lobby from January 19 through
30, with photos of the
medieval five-star Hotel
Schlossle in the Old Town of
Tallinn, as well as the Silja
Line (Serenade) from Stockholm
to Helsinki, and the Scandic
Hotel Ariadne in Stockholm.
There is, of
course, more to be said, about
questions not answered and
even shhh-ed and shouted down.
The UN and its coterie of
pro-Secretary General
correspondents do this: after
several of them hounded investigative
Haider Rizvi out of his long
time office at the UN and he
soon died in Pakistan, many
crocodile tears were shed. The
documents of them lobbying to
get his ousted still exist;
they will perhaps feature in a
stalled or censored
documentary.
So too with
long time UN correspondent and
muckraker Stewart Stogel, who
among other things used to do
news stake-outs on the
doorstep of the UN-provided
Sutton Place mansion. Stogel
was chased out of his UN
office and died at 60;
crocodile tears, slightly
fewer of them at least in the
UN, were shed.
Before he
died, Stogel asked the UN why
it "has taken the outrageous
position of contacting various
news organizations and
occasionally 'advising' them
on who to assign to cover the
UN. The UN has often used
credential accreditation as a
"political" pressure tactic to
retaliate for news coverage it
took exception to. This is a
UN that is quite
literally spinning out of
control. How long will this
continue?” Still.
We'll
close with another of Ann
Charles' questions, to a
President of the UN General
Assembly:
Question: Ann
Charles, Baltic Review. As
President of the General
Assembly, how concerned are
you about the Kremlin’s
aggressive behavior which
includes the illegal
annexation of Crimea, its
direct participation in a war
in Eastern Ukraine and attacks
against Georgia in violation
of the UN Charter?
PGA: As President
of the General Assembly and as
a human being, I strongly
believe in the international
system that is based on the
rule of law and that this rule
of law is respected by
everyone. And I also believe
that we shall be very much
united in condemning every
violation of the rule of law.
That is what I see as one of
the main roles of the United
Nations, to help us to set the
universal system of law, of
rules."
Except for the UN
itself. Ann Charles, Rest in
Peace.
***
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