In
UN At Nikki Haley Stakeout
Nothing on Africa, Cameroon or
UN Reform As Inner City Press
Banned
By Matthew
Russell Lee, CJR Letter
PFT Q&A
UNITED NATIONS,
September 20 –
When US Ambassador Nikki Haley
held a press availability on
September 20 about the
upcoming UN General Assembly
High Level Week, almost
nothing was said about Africa
which is over half of the UN
Security Council's workload.
Inner City Press, which has
been banned from the UN since
being roughed up by UN
Security while covering the UN
Budget Committee meeting on
July 3 and which has been
trying at the UN Delegates
Entrance gate to ask Haley and
her Deputy Jonathan Cohen
about Cameroon
and now Uganda since then, was
unable to attend the stakeout.
Haley said President Trump
will meet the heads of state
of South Korea, Israel, the
UK's May, Japan's Abe,
France's Macron and Egypt's
Sisi; she said that among
others Treasury Secretary
Mnuchin will be in town. Inner
City Press was unable to ask
about that, either. Haley
called on CBS and France 24;
the "lady in the green dress"
(Turkish state media) and
Reuters who she said she was
looking for. No Africa
anywhere. And then it was
over, while FOIA
requests
pend. When Haley held a
sit-down press conference on
September 4 about her Security
Council residency, her second,
of the 14 questions called on
by the US Mission to the UN
not one was about anything in
Africa or even about UN
reform. This happened as 60%
of the UN's work is in Africa,
the UN is caught up in sexual
abuse and harassment scandals
and while Inner City Press,
which covers UN abuse and has
uncovered Secretary General
Antonio Guterres' inaction in
Cameroon
and the African business
links of his son Pedro
Guimarães e Melo De Oliveira
Guterres has been banned
from the UN for 63 days by
Guterres, prospectively to
miss access to the General
Assembly High Level week for
the first time in 11 years.
When Inner City
Press was roughed up while it
covered the UN Budget
Committee and a plan by
Guterres to move jobs
including from New York to
Mexico City, it was covered by
Fox News which one assumes the
US Mission reads. Inner City
Press did not reach out for
any assistance from the
Mission, holding to the
principle that the UN should
treat journalists fairly
without a state sponsor.
Nothing improved.
In fact, Guterres' British
head of Global Communications
Alison Smale issued a letter
banning Inner City Press,
dredging up old discredited
complaints from Morocco and
her bitter deputy. Still,
nothing from Haley or the US
Mission.
Finally on August
24, after Inner City Press
learned from a non-US source
of President Trump's plan for
a meeting about drugs on
September 24, Inner City Press
formally raised the matter to
Haley's spokesman, a holdover
from the Samantha Power days,
John Degory. He indicated he
heard what was said.
But
access was not arranged to
Haley's September 4 press
conference, at which after
Haley to her credit at least
raised South Sudan in her
opening remarks Degory tried
to give a question to among
others a retired travel agent
and a barely intelligible
resident correspondent from
Pakistan who beyond assisting
in Inner City Press' eviction
spent the past weekend tweeting
that tennis star Serena
Williams and her outfits are “pathetic.”
That's today's UN.
Now
there is a deadline to cover
the UN General Assembly and
Inner City Press has applied
and has writing an open letter
to Haley, below, and cc-ed her
and Degory on its polite
letter to Smale. Watch this
site. Sixty days after Inner
City Press was physically
ousted frm the UN and then
subject to a ongoing ban from
entry to cover the Security
Council or UN noon briefing,
Inner City Press sent a now
open letter to US Ambassador
Nikki Haley, here:
Dear Ambassador Haley:
On
this the first day of your UN
Security Council Presidency,
this concerns the censorship
of Press the UN has engaged in
since July 3.
I
was physically ousted that day
by UN Security while I
staked-out a meeting of the
Fifth (Budget) Committee as I
have for a decade. Right after
I spoke to Cameroon Ambassador
Tommo Monthe, chair of the
Fifth Committee, I was grabbed
by Lt Ronald E. Dobbins and
another officer, shirt torn,
laptop damaged, arm twisted.
This was covered in Fox News,
here,
as well as The (UK)
Independent.
On July 5 when I came
to cover the Security Council
meetings on Syria and Yemen, I
was banned from entering UN.
After a no due process review
by the Department of Public
Information's Alison Smale, my
accreditation was “withdrawn”
on August 17, seemingly for
life. The letter is online here,
downloadable with some of my
rebuttal (not heard by Smale
or DPI) here.
I have
raised this verbally to some
in your US Mission to the UN,
including eight days ago to
your spokesman John Degory,
followed up in writing with a
request to be admitted to your
September 4 Program of World
press conference. In your
first such press conference on
3 April 2017, I asked you
about peacekeepers' sexual
abuse and the continuing need
for the Freedom of Information
Act at the UN. Video here.
As
things stand, without any due
process, I am banned from your
press conference -- at which,
for the record, I would like
to ask you about the
Anglophone crisis in Cameroon
which I asked you about on 18
October 2017. Video here.
I am also banned from covering
the General Assembly High
Level week, the deadline for
accreditation for which is
September 5.
I
firmly believe I have a right
to cover this member states'
event, despite what I see as
bias and lawlessness by DPI
and the wider Secretariat. UN
spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric in an
August 27 noon
briefing I was
banned from
attending cut
off a question
about my
ouster, video
here,
insisting that
to say this is
about freedom
of the press
would be
wrong. (Then
why is it in
the Press
Freedom
Tracker, here,
and the Columbia
Journalism
Review,
among others
for example in
the UK,
Japan,
Italy
and Cameroon?
Why this
5000+
signature
petition?) They
have gotten so petty as to get
UNICEF to block me from a book
event they had invited me to
on September 5. They similarly
got my blocked from a press
conference held outside of the
UN at the Pierre Hotel by the
UN World Intellectual Property
Organization, whose work on
North Korea's cyanide patents
I have also asked you about.
So I am
writing to you, asking for
your intervention at least on
the limited issues of not
being blocked from attending
your September 4 press
conference and relatedly DPI
relenting and not blocking me
from covering the GA High
Level Week, and allowing me to
apply and be accredited on
Sept 5 like thousands of other
correspondents, many state
media of government with
little respect for press
freedom.
Bigger picture, why has the UN
banned me for 60 days and
counting? I think it is
because, more than before,
they cannot or feel they do
not have to put up with
critical questions and
coverage.
Not to be
put too fine a point on it,
but this is NOT a new day at
the UN - or what is new about
it is the willingness to rough
up and journalist and ban its
media for life, with no due
process or appeal. This is not
consistent with the First
Amendment of the US
Constitution (which it is now
clear entirely stops east of
First Avenue) - nor with
Article 19 of the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
This is an
outrage at the UN that must be
addressed.
Matthew Russell
Lee, InnerCityPress.com
***
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