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On Cameroon, Inner City Press Asked UN & IMF in March 2017, IMF Says Risk But UK, Not Int'l

By Matthew Russell Lee, More here

UNITED NATIONS, December 26 – The UN Security Council is going on a mission to Cameroon but searching my email I don't find any notice of the trip much less an invitation to cover it. I've gone on previous Council flights to Sudan and Cote d'Ivoire, then one to Sri Lanka where I fought with UN officials and the corporate media who service them. Now I'm cut out.

Evicted along with Inner City Press from long time work space on the third floor of the UN, I'm working as a non-resident correspondent in the bullpen, no longer in the loop. But I've heard of Biya's internet cut in the Anglophone zones and I ask the UN about it.

The spokesman for played-out Secretary General Antonio Guterres has dodged my questions on March 2 and 3 and 4, so on March 5 I email Geneva, the High Commissioner on Human Rights: "What is the UN system, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), doing about abuses against the Anglophone community in Cameroon, in the Northwest and Southwest regions where the Internet has been cut for 49 days and counting?"

It's a softball question but there's nothing. Silence in Geneva but ambush in New York. UN Department of Political Affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman is holding a rare press conference and I ask him about Cameroon. He responds that the Central African envoy Francois Lonseny Fall is going. While the spokesman the next day has no more info, it's a start. The UN is aware. In fact, the UN is complicit.

The next day I discover that the UN's Resident Coordinator in Cameroon, Najat Rochdi of Moroccco, blocks Inner City Press on Twitter. It's said she's leaving soon to the Central African Republic; I argue that the selection of her replacement should be a transparent process, as does the Free UN Coalition for Access. Then I ask the International Monetary Fund, online, about the Internet cut. They have a response. On IMF site, here, from 34:56. IMF transcript: "There is a question of Cameroon, from Matthew Lee, 'please state the IMF's awareness of civil unrest and arrests in Northwest and Southwest Cameroon, also known as the Anglophone areas, and their impact?' We are indeed aware of the events in the so-called Anglophone regions of Cameroon. The macroeconomic impact of any event that could affect production and/or consumption, is typically felt with a certain lag. So, these events started in November last year, and thus are likely to have not had a significant impact on production in 2016. For 2017, the risks to our growth outlook include a combination of external and domestic factors, including continuation of the sociopolitical events in the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon."

 Alright, I say - so there IS an economic impact. But a few hours later... More here


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