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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT NY Post List

UN GATE, September 1 – 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. Then he  disappeared for three weeks in August, his public schedules entirely blank, following by denying Inner City Press access to UNGA, below.

 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August 30 the UN issued a denial of accreditation with no reasoning other than that accreditation had previously been revoked: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accreditation request, with reference no: M5413398, has been declined for the following reason: Media accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."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.

 On August 3 the US through State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus issued a statement on Aden. A full six days after, after giving a UN post to an official of the UAE which has helped starve Yemenis, the missing Guterres through his censoring spokesman Stephane Dujarric issued a canned statement, while refusing all Press questions. Now on August 10 from MSF, this: "Since Thursday evening, Yemen’s port city of Aden has been gripped by intense fighting between opposing armed groups. In less than 24 hours, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treated 119 people in its hospital and the wounded continue to pour in. The airport is closed, and life in the city has ground to a halt.   "Most of the wounded are civilians trapped by the fighting and probably victims of mortar fire or stray bullets," said Caroline Seguin, MSF’s head of programs in Yemen. "Yesterday we treated a woman who had a bullet wound and she was eight months pregnant. At least five people were dead on arrival at the hospital, one of them a child." Sixty-two of the people treated by MSF required emergency inpatient care.  "The city’s a battlefield. We can hear the sound of heavy weapon fire and tanks are moving around the streets," Seguin said. “Our hospital is stretched to the limit. Our teams are working around the clock to take care of the many people wounded by the fighting, and we can’t get anyone in to replace them. The city’s paralyzed and some personnel aren’t able to get to the hospital because the fighting’s really fierce and the roads into the city are cut off. Given all of this, we’re worried we won’t be able to get supplies through to the hospital."  The fighting also threatens the port of Aden, the only fully functional port in the country, through which imported goods and some humanitarian aid—including MSF’s supplies—are brought into Yemen.   "If the situation continues to deteriorate . . . there’s also a risk of prices being impacted and, consequently, people’s access to basic essentials when there’s already inflation," said Seguin." And Guterres is missing - deeply concerned, of course.

 On July 15 the UN issued a statement without the name of Michael Lollesgaard. It's not suprising - he is leaving to become Danish Army chief of staff, the UN once again used without accomplishing anything, its abuses included disgusting sexual abuse covered up by journalist engaged in the same. We'll have more on this. - and on this byline: "UN vessel, Red Sea, 15 July 2019." The UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric, while banning Inner City Press from any entry of the UN for the 377th day, is off on vacation for the rest of July. We'll have more on this.

 On July 10 in a noon briefing the UN banned Inner City Press from attending, Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq declined to give a read out of UK/UN envoy Martin Griffiths meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Later State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus issued this: "Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo met today with UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen Martin Griffiths. The Secretary thanked the Special Envoy for his continued efforts to move the political process forward. The Secretary and the Special Envoy discussed the latest developments on the UN-led political track. The Secretary expressed concern over the recent increase in Iranian-supported Houthi attacks into Saudi territory that exacerbate the conflict and deepen mistrust. The Secretary and the Special Envoy agreed that parties must continue working toward a political settlement and an end to the conflict in Yemen."

 On June 20, this from US Senator Bernie Sanders as he voted in support of joint resolutions seeking to block the transfer of $8 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia and other states: "The Trump administration’s attempt to do an end-run around Congressional disapproval in order to transfer weapons to the Saudi and Emirati regimes is a violation of the law, and an affront to the Constitutional order.   “Repeatedly, we see this president using phony ‘emergency’ declarations to sidestep the law to get what he wants. The fact that he is transferring these weapons at a time when the Saudis and Emiratis are waging a catastrophic war in Yemen, a war that a bipartisan majority in Congress has declared to be unauthorized and illegal, is even more outrageous.   “It’s time for the president to respect the will of a convincing majority of the Senate and follow the law. I will do everything I can to assert Congress’s power over the purse to end the war in Yemen and block these weapons from being used by the Saudis in that war. Trump should not do the bidding of the repressive, undemocratic regime of Saudi Arabia, which was exposed this week by the United Nations for the premeditated killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the coverup of that crime.” Well, it was exposed by an independent expert affiated with but not representing the UN. The head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, is totally down with MBS, as with Paul Biya of Cameroon.

  Consider this on May 26 from UNICEF's Henrietta Fore who has refused to make even the UN's minimal public financial disclosure: "Seven children between the ages of 4 and 14 were killed on Friday in an attack on the Mawiyah district, in the southern Yemeni city of Taiz.  “This attack brings to 27 the number of children killed and injured in a recent escalation of violence near Sanaa and in Taiz over the past 10 days. These are only the numbers that the United Nations has been able to confirm; actual numbers are likely to be even higher.  “Nowhere is safe for children in Yemen. The conflict is haunting them in their homes, schools and playgrounds.  “We, once again, urge all warring parties in Yemen and those who have influence over them to protect children at all times and keep them out of harm’s way. Attacks on civilian infrastructure must stop and calls for peace in Yemen must be heeded.” How can an American UN official refuse financial disclosure? A fish rots from the head.

  Similarly, exiled puppet "president" Hadi is saying he won't deal with middle of the road UN envoy Griffiths unless Guterres gives him, like MBS, assurances. What has led to such perceived weakness of Guterres that even Hadi can do this? Well, not only did Guterres accept the PNG-ing of his envoy to Somalia - he then threw the envoy Nicholas Haysom under the bus, telling staff Haysom was "impolite" to sign a letter about human rights to the Somali government.

 Inner City Press exclusively publishes audio of this, here, video here, because UN staff disgusted by Guterres' sell out of human rights and of them are exclusively providing information to Inner City Press, which Guterres had roughed up and banned now for 325 days and counting.

Given that development, leaders even more propped up than Hadi will do the same. Guterres is killing what remains of the UN's credibility. #DumpGuterresToTryToSaveTheUN.

 Back on May 15 for the UNSC's Yemen meeting NRC's Mohamed Abdi  “As the UN Security Council meets today to discuss the situation in Yemen, governments funding and supporting this war must maintain pressure on conflict parties to fully implement the Stockholm agreement, including deployment of all monitors needed to oversee the ceasefire.  While we welcome fresh talks between the government of Yemen and Ansar Allah on sharing port revenues and paying public workers, conflict rages on in many parts of the country. In Al Dahle civilians remain trapped by the clashes unable to flee to safety, the main road supplying food from Aden in the South to the capital Sana’a remains cut off by the fighting. Civilians in Taiz live under the daily threat of sniper fire. In Hajjah, fighting threatens to cut of the city’s main water supply and access to the public hospital, and heavy air strikes continue to displace families...”  Guterres is on a junket to Fiji, with his MOUs with MBS in place, corrupt. On 17 April 2019, the UN Security Council put out a Press Statement. But what success could the UN have, when its Secretary General continues to have a memorandum of understanding with MBS, and refuses to answer any questions about it, preferring to extend his Saudi-like ban on the Press that asks? See here.

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