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UN Guterres in GA
Hid With Sisi, Grinned
With Biya, Evaded Haiti
Cholera & Kenya
Questions, Fled to CAR
By Matthew
Russell Lee, photos,
Video,
more
UNITED NATIONS,
December 29 – Antonio
Guterres' first UN General
Assembly “high level” week as
Secretary General featured a
grip and grin with Egypt's
Sisi witnessed only by Sisi's
state media to whom Inner City
Press' office is assigned
under Guterres, a praise-fest
with Cameroon's Paul Biya
even as his forces killed
Anglophone civilians and a
total refusal to answer
questions on UN corruption.
During the week,
Haiti
called on Guterres to
belatedly do something about
the 10,000 people the UN
killed with cholera; Guterres
has raised very little money
and his envoy on the topic has
yet to take Press questions.
Even when
Guterres did, on September 13,
he answered only on
peacekeeper sexual abuse,
entirely evading Inner City
Press' question
about the six UN bribery
guilty verdicts in the case of
Ng Lap Seng, for coverage of
which Inner City Press was
evicted and is still
restricted under Guterres.
Other corrupt events and
bribery cases proceeded;
Guterres' Secretariat took on
a Junior Professional Officer
from Kim Jong-Un's North
Korea, while refusing to
confirm the name.
By October, with
his head of Global
Communications vowing to spin
the trip, Guterres took off
for Central African Republic,
refusing to answer why one of
the only three officials
criticized in the UN report on
sexual abuse there, Renner
Onana, remained in place, with
promotion. On the way back,
most tellingly, Guterres
stopped in Younde and took a
golden statue from Paul “The
Killer” Biya, smiling. This is
the symbol of Guterre's
Secretary Generalship....
Guterres' first
summer as Secretary General
had a 14 day black hole in it,
in which not only did he
disappear but his spokespeople
refused at first to confirm to
Inner City Press even were he
was: the Dalmatian coast.
He had failed on
Cyprus,
descending from the 38th floor
for a mere three minute
stakeout. He delegated the Cameroon
conflict, unwisely, to his Deputy
SG Amina J. Mohammed, who was
said by Paul Biya's Ambassador
to be in the bag, firmly
against any secession.
She had worked
for Ban Ki-moon, whose era at
the UN was indicted, and in
essence convicted, along with
Macau-based businessman Ng Lap
Seng at the end of July. But
Guterres doubled down in
impunity, claiming that the UN
was the victim of the scheme,
even as its accomplices
continued on the payroll.
Guterres' UN was accused of
racial discrimination in a
Town Hall meeting he closed to
the press - but what did he
care?
He dodged
questions about the crackdowns
in Togo
and Gabon and left, even at
year's end, the UN Special
Adviser on Africa position
empty. In Kenya he called
electoral official Msango's
murder an “untimely demise,”
alternately deferring to Ban
Ki-moon's pro-Kenyatta son in
law and then to his opposite,
Roslyn Akombe. Apparently,
Africa didn't and doesn't
interest him.
In Europe, he
supposed his group by ignoring
Catalonia, even as he let
sell-out Catalan Cristina “The
Evicter” Gallach stay on too
long as a representative to
the UN's school. Her
replacement Alison Smale was
late in coming, and surrounded
by the same staff like
Guterres, would continue the
same abuses and worse. The
Fall was approaching...
In May 2017,
there were still no reforms,
and even his budget and reform
speech was withheld when Inner
City Press asked
for a copy of it.
Rather than
propose anything but
deck-chair moving changes in
UN bureaucracy - new acronyms,
new Departments - Guterres
seemed to believe his private
meetings and canned speeches
could do the trick. He met
with 11 Congressmembers in May
- all Democrats, Inner City
Press' inquiry found
- and gave a speech in South
Carolina. But to what
effect?
By year's end the
UN budget
would be cut by over $200
million with Guterres nowhere
in sight, already on vacation
in Lisbon, not even a comment
for two days. In the real
world, in South
Sudan for example,
leaked documents published by
Inner City Press showed
inaction as the SPLA moved
toward a violent reclaiming of
Pagak.
Amid the ongoing
crackdown in Burundi, the best
Guterres could do was a
Burkina Faso based envoy,
Michel Kafando, who would be
only part-time
Inner City Press learned
though Guterres didn't tell
the Security Council members
that. He never had a comment
on Morocco's crackdown in the
Rif,
despite dozens of questions
from Inner City Press, perhaps
thinking that silence might
help on Western
Sahara (it didn't).
On nuclear North
Korea, Guterres did nothing as
the UN Federal Credit Union
did business
with the mission and UN WIPO
helped with cyanide patents.
In continuing
Cameroon failure, Guterres'
Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed
appeared at the ghoulish
“National Day” in a townhouse
on Manhattan's Upper East
Side; the Ambassador told
Inner City Press due to her
position on Biafra in “her”
Nigeria, she would never
support the Anglophones in
his. She has yet to answer
questions, initially
surprising but after the
rosewood scandal was revealed,
more problematic. Scandals
were coming...
Two months earlier:
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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