In
UN of Guterres Spokesman
Dujarric Defends Ban of Inner
City Press Citing UNspecified
Danger From $4M Apartment Vanity
Show
By Matthew
Russell Lee, CJR Q&A, NY
Post
UNITED NATIONS
GATE, NOVEMBER 7 -- As
Inner City Press moved forward
with its inquiry into UN
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres' personal use
of public funds, silence on
slaughter in Cameroon
and elsewhere and failure to
disclose family members'
financial interests in Angola
and elsewhere, his spokesman
Stephane Dujarric on 20 June
2018 said that “things will
soon be getting worse” for
Inner City Press' reporter.
Two days
later the reporter was pushed
out of the General
Assembly lobby during a speech
by Guterres by UN Security
Lieutenant Ronald E. Dobbins,
who did it again more
violently on July
3. Since then Inner City
Press has been banned
from entering the UN, and
Guterres even tried
to get Inner City Press ousted
from Park East Synagogue
twenty blocks north of the UN
on October 31.
As
many online have questioned
this no due process ouster,
including from Cameroon,
Japan,
the UK,
Italy
and other places in Europe, we
can now report that Dujarric
while refusing to answer Inner
City Press' and a UN
Expert's written
questions about how to appeal
this lifetime ban has reached
out to try to quiet some
critics.
Tellingly, while
he has entirely ignored for
example Anglophone Cameroonian
critics regardless of how
polite or articulate they are,
or how many social media
followers they have, Dujarric
has reached out to European
critics. To these he refers
darkly to (his?) staff feeling
at risk from Inner City Press'
reporting.
This
is how any dictatorship would
try to justifying physically
assaulting and banning a
reporter - say that the
journalist's reporting made
unnamed people feel unsafe in
unspecified ways.
Yes,
Inner City Press named UN
officials who took money from
now convicted briber Ng Lap
Seng, including to provide Ng
with falsified General
Assembly documents. Is it
legitimate for Guterres' UN to
oust and ban a media for
making briber-takers feel
unsafe? There are others: the
Patrick Ho trial starts this
month.
Even
in Dujarric's private outreach
to European critics, he has no
evidence. This is why he and
USG Alison Smale never offered
a hearing or opportunity to be
heard: there is no evidence,
the charges are Trump-ed up.
Smale's deputy claims an article
shouldn't have been written
about him using audio of what
he said at an official
stake-out position accepted
(at least for other media) by
Smale's own Department, which
called frivolous the Morocco
Mission complaint Smale also
used.
But today
we ask: why does Dujarric
refuse to response for example
to African critics while
reaching out to Europeans to
say that the banning of Inner
City Press should be accepted,
that asking the UN questions
in person is a privilege? It
is because Dujarric himself is
privileged. Publicly available
records -- don't be scared --
show that Dujarric bought an
apartment on Manhattan's Upper
East Side for $3,785,000.
Now
the UN is wasteful - but does
it pay its spokesman enough to
buy a $4,000,000 apartment?
The money, it seems from
public records, comes from
(where else) an art gallery,
the Odyssia Gallery in New
York, which among other things
produces vanity shows.
It
is all very nice, a position
from which to target hard
working media and try to
destroy a shirt, a laptop, a
livelihood, all without due
process, only later
evidence-free excuses provided
in private to other European,
banning questions from Africa
and about the UN's corruption.
It is UNacceptable. We'll have
more on this.
***
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
UN Office, past & future?: S-303, UN, NY 10017 USA
For now UNder
Guterres: UN Delegates
Entrance Gate
and mail: Dag H.
Center
Box 20047, NY NY 10017 USA
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in
the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-2018 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
for
|
,
