As
US Drops Out of UN Human Rights
Council UN Spokesman Arranges
Private Reply to Al Jazeera
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Periscope
UNITED NATIONS,
June 19 – Minutes before US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
and Ambassador to the UN Nikki
Haley announced the US'
withdrawal from the UN Human
Rights Council, the doors to
the UN Press Briefing Room
opened. But nothing was
announced. While many media
had asked the UN for response,
the spokesman for out of town,
World Cup bound Secretary
General Antonio Guterres
arranged for a private “press
conference” with Al Jazeera.
Inner City Press, evicted from
the UN Press Briefing Room and
its UN work space by Dujarric,
was trying to cover the HRC
announcement from a small
focus booth on the UN second
floor. Click here
for Inner City Press'
Periscope stream. It observed
Al Jazeera's cameraman go by,
with a staffer from spokesman
Stephane Dujarric's office,
then Al Jazeera's
correspondent then producer.
In an abundance of caution
Inner City Press did not go
into the UN Press Briefing
Room -- which, it and the Free
UN Coalition for Access
maintain cannot legitimately
be opened to some but not
other correspondents. Instead,
Inner City Press asked the UN
Department of Public
Information's minder unit,
which it must now use to cover
any events in the General
Assembly, to ask what was
taking place in the UN Press
Briefing Room. The DPI staffer
went in, and then re-emerged
with Dujarric and the three Al
Jazeera staffers. “No event,”
Inner City Press was told. The
Al Jazeera producer said they
had arranged for a sound byte.
Oh. So this is how it is done
at the UN. Similarly, Inner
City Press was excluded - by
Dujarric and DPI's Alison
Smale - from a background
briefing on counter-terrorism.
How corrupt is the UN? Well,
it took most of its
counter-terrorism money from
Saudi Arabia, just as
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres smiled and took a
$930 million check from
Saudi's Crown Prince and said
nothing about Saudi bombing of
Yemen, and now assault on the
port of Hodeidah there.
On June 18 the UN in New York
held a so-called background
briefing for only some of the
media which cover the UN day
to day.
Excluded
from the background briefing
unlike some media who rarely
if every report on the issue
was Inner City Press, which
has criticized Guterres for
his silence in taking the
Saudi check, and which remains
restricted for covering the
bribery of the UN by Ng Lap
Seng and South South News -
which has placed people not
only in UNTV but even in UN
Department of Public
Information - and now by
Patrick Ho and the China
Energy Fund Committee.
Other than more targeted
censorship, the only rationale
for excluding Inner City Press
which was one of only five
media - including one which
also works for UN Photo -
covering the Small Arms and
Light Weapons press conference
on June 18, is that it is no
longer a “resident
correspondent.”
This is due
to Guterres' spokesman
Stephane Dujarric, who evicted
Inner City Press from the UN
Press Briefing Room and from
its office, and from DPI's
Alison Smale, who still has no
content neutral rule while
putting in Inner City Press'
office a no-show Egypt state
media Akhbar al Yom. Smale has
her husband playing piano at a
World Cup event sponsored by
the Russian Mission - this is
today's UN. We continue to
believe that briefer USG
Vladimir Ivanovich Voronkov
was simply unaware this time
of the censorship underlying
his briefing (of Michèle
Coninsx we are less sure).
We'll have more on this.
***
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