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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT NY Post List

UN GATE, May 2 – UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on 27 March 2018 lavished praise on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman now accused with respect to Jamal Khashoggi, accepting a $930 million check from the Saudis and UAE, with not a word of the Saudi led bombing campaign that has killed civilians and caused cholera in Yemen. While his team still has MOU(s) with MBS, Guterres conceals others of his financial links.

  Now alongside the first COVID-19 case confirmed in Yemen, Guterres is refusing to answer about lax social distancing practices at his mission in South Sudan, and now a petition, and even use by UN Security of its gym, three people at a time, contrary to New York law, Inner City Press scoops here. On May 2 WHO’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean issued a statement on on COVID-19 in Yemen: "To date, there are seven confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the south of Yemen, including two deaths, as declared by national authorities. No other cases have been officially reported to WHO, although we anticipate the virus is actively circulating throughout the country.  Best practices have shown that when people are informed and warned about outbreaks early on, and where measures are in place to test, trace, isolate and care for cases, transmission of the virus can be controlled.  More than 215 countries, territories and areas have reported cases of the virus to date, and the pandemic has overwhelmed some of the most advanced and sophisticated health systems in the world. After five years of war, Yemen’s health system is fragile and facing catastrophic shortages. COVID-19 supplies in country are grossly insufficient.  Since the declaration of the pandemic, we have been presenting various evidence-based scenarios to ensure that health authorities have the full picture of how this virus may potentially affect 16 million men, women and children who make up over 50% of the population.  Operating on the assumption that community transmission is already taking place across the country, WHO and partners continue to support national and health counterparts with the limited resources at hand. Additional resources are being mobilised, in the context of major global shortages of essential supplies and equipment to respond to COVID-19. We continue to prioritize the most vulnerable and are working to identify ways of ensuring that a more reliable supply chain is established.  Health authorities are providing capacities for testing, treating and isolating suspected and confirmed cases, relying on established nation-wide hotlines and 333 rapid response health teams in the country who are working 24/7 to detect, investigate, test and refer suspected cases to designated health facilities.  Health authorities have also enhanced COVID-19 capacities in four central public health laboratories in Sana’a, Aden, Sayoun, and Taiz, which have full capacity to test for COVID-19. Four more public health laboratories will soon have similar capacity.  As long as even one case is unidentified and not properly treated, isolated and contacts traced, COVID-19 will continue to pose a significant threat to the Yemeni people and the country’s struggling health system.  Even in resource-poor settings, collective action integrating the full commitment of government, community groups, and the private sector can effectively mitigate the impact of the pandemic." But what about the UN Secretariat's outrageous lack of social distancing in South Sudan (UNMISS) and hypocritical keeping open of gym in New York, and banning of and refusal to answer the Press? What is WHO doing about that? Why did WHO give Cameroon's Biya government 15 luxury vehicles instead of PPE? We've asked. Watch this site.

 On September 12, from the UN of Antonio "Back Door" Guterres who fled into a side door to his public mansion to avoid questions after a luxury boat cruise on September 7, this: "The Secretary-General today announced the appointment of Lieutenant General (retired) Abhijit Guha of India as the Chair of the Redeployment Coordination Committee (RCC) and Head of the United Nations Mission in support of the Hudaydah Agreement (UNMHA) pursuant to Security Council resolutions 2452 (2019) and 2481 (2019).     Lieutenant General (retired) Guha succeeds Lieutenant General Michael Lollesgaard, who served as RCC Chair and Head of UNMHA from 31 January to 31 July 2019." 

 On September 1, with Guterres still silent and partnering with MBS through his Youth Envoy and craven UN Correspondents Association, here, more than 100 people have reportedly been killed in an air strike by the Saudi-led military coalition on a detention center in Yemen, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday. The ICRC rushed to the scene in the city of Dhamar with medical teams and hundreds of body bags. "The location that was hit has been visited by ICRC before," Rauchenstein said. We'll have more on this - and this:

Past 4 pm on Friday, August 30 the UN issued a denial of accreditation with no reasoning other than that accreditation had previously been revoked:

"From: malu <malu@un.org>
Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 4:23 PM
Subject: U.N. eAccreditation request for Matthew Lee Ref # M5413398 has been declined
To: Inner City Press:

Greetings Matthew Lee from Inner City Press,  Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M5413398, has been declined for the following reason: Media accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."

  This is Kafka-esque, and corrupt. We will have more, much more, on this.

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