| Before
Biden Putin Meet, CPJ Q&A on Belarus
Has Info But No Comment on UN Press Ban
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Video Song
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- CJR -
PFT
UN GATE, June 9 –
Right after dissident blogger
Pratasevich was grabbed off a
Ryan Air flight forced to land
in Belarus, many including the
US spoke.
But for more than
a full day, nothing from
Antonio Guterres, the UN
Secretary General who rarely
takes questions and even had
the Press which asked him
about the mass killings in
Cameroon thrown
out of the UN. Alert here;
new Belarus Blues song here.
On June 9,
the Committee to Protect
Journalists held a Zoom press
conference with Volha
Siakhovich of
BAJ on
the topic, and Inner City
Press submitted two questions:
"Question from
Inner City Press: Do you think
the Biden Administration's
decision to limit to a vague
"members of the news media
doing their jobs" protection
against gag orders and
surveillance undermine its
ability to fully pursue the
issue of press freedom in
Belarus? Likewise, do you
think the UN Secretariat's
failure to have any content
neutral media accreditation
and access rules undermine the
ability of it and those
responsible to raise Belarus's
abuses, to the degree the will
to do so exists in anything
but the vaguest terms?"
The
response, photo here,
by
CPJ's Gypsy
Guillén Kaiser,
included
that CPJ has no comment on the
UN's accreditation policies.
How not, if they cite to and
use the UN? In fact, the UN
Group of Friends was cited.
Will CPJ's solicitude
for UN censorship end with its
change in leadership, also
announced on June 9? Watch
this site.
Late and
hypocritical, given that they
have done nothing about
Guterres banning
Inner City Press now for
1073 days amid its questions,
this: "The co-chairs of the
United Nations Group of
Friends for the Protection of
Journalists – Greece, France
and Lithuania - and the
undersigned Members of the
Group of Friends strongly
condemn the forced landing of
a Ryanair flight in Minsk,
Belarus, on May 23, 2021,
prompted by Belarusian
authorities in order to arrest
and detain independent
journalist Raman Pratasevich
and his companion, Sofia
Sapega...
There can
be no Press Freedom when there
is fear. [See see this
and this
at UN.]
Signed,
Co-chairs of the UN Group of
Friends for the Protection of
Journalists, Ambassadors,
Permanent Representatives of
Greece, France and
Lithuania
Annex:
Co-signatories members of the
Group of Friends (in
alphabetical order): Austria,
Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Costa
Rica, Ghana, Latvia, Republic
of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland,
the UK, USA, Uruguay."
On May 28,
Guterres' UN Press Briefing
Room hosted a press
conference, from which Inner
City Press was banned, in
which the grabbing of
Pratasevich was called fake
news, in response to questions
from state media.
Inner City
Press has asked then incoming
UNSC president for June Estonia
for access, to which there has
been no response (ACT is just
an act) - and it and the Free
UN Coalition for Access
(FUNCA) will report on all
results.
***
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