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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR Letter PFT Q&A

UNITED NATIONS GATE, March 6 – NBC News sent Cynthia McFadden to the Central African Republic for five days, rare for US network television. But her report broadcast on the Today Show on March 6, complete with ride alongs in UN vehicles and planes and UNICEF presented as an NGO and as the only way to help the country, made no mention at all that UN Peacekeepers have raped, and continued to rape, civilians including children in the CAR, and that UNICEF has been criticized in detail for its response. It would have been difficult for McFadden and NBC to miss this issue - even PBS' Frontline ran "UN Sex Abuse Scandal." The children of the CAR need help. But presenting the UN as the only way, and covering up its sins so that they continue and grow as they have under Antonio Guterres, is not the right approach, not prize-worthy. We'll have more on this. For months the UN has refused questions on its peacekeepers' actions in the Central African Republic from Inner City Press, ranging from alleged rapes by Cameroon troops to Mauritanians swinging the lifeless corpse of a civilian. On February 20 the outgoing envoy of Antonio Guterres to the country, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, took questions across the street from the UN. Inner City Press asked him about the rape allegations, and why the UN is not answering questions. Periscope video here. He delivered an impassioned response, but seemed not to know that Guterres and his spokesman Stephane Dujarric are refusing questions about his mission, and have banned Inner City Press from any entry of the UN. In fairness, his defense of peacekeepers' inaction as civilians have been killed is that they are spread too thin. But that does not explain the rapes, or the refusal to answer, or the censorship. We'll have more on this. Back on February 20 when Richard Haas took questions near the UN, Inner City Press asked him about UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' performance on Cameroon and on Venezuela, on which Guterres skipped the January 26 urgent UNSC meeting by staying in the UN's $15 million mansion on Sutton Place, and about US Senator Marco Rubio's critique of Guterres. Video here. Haass turned it into a question about the UN Security Council, saying blaming it is like blaming Madison Square Garden for the Knicks. But the question is about Antonio Guterres, akin to James Dolan. And what of Rubio's critique? Haass was otherwise meaty, from Russian to China to designer multilateralism. But while grateful as always to the hosts, why is it people avoid assessing Guterres, or as soon on February 20, assume it's a ten year term? It's not. #DumpGuterres. When Helen Clark who ran an open campaign for Secretary General won by the significantly less open Antonio Guterres spoke about drugs near the UN on November 19, Inner City Press went to ask and cover it. On the panel also were two UN officials, Craig Mokhiber of the office of Michelle Bachelet and Simone Monasebian, the New York Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Ms Monasebian recounted how some member states were prepared to break consensus on a paragraph on harm reduction in the annual resolution in the UN's Third Committee so that paragraph was removed. Inner City Press when called on asked the panel about the Security Council's heavy handed and military approach to drugs, for example in Afghanistan, and asked for more detail on the Third Committee which it for 138 days has been banned from accessing by UNSG Guterres. Ms. Monasebian noted that beyond Afghanistan the Security Council addressed drugs from 2009 under the Presidency of then Council member Burkina Faso through 2014. Mr. Mokhiber said that military approaches are counter productive. And Helen Clark when she spoke chided the shrinking of civil society space and attacks on journlists including exclusion from the UN across the road. Video here. It was appreciated, as were the event's hosts. Also on panel was Ann Fordham of IDPC and Moderator Jimena Leiva Roesc. The US sponsored and strong-armed statement of September was panned, and Ms. Fordham noted the US is not even pressing it in Vienna. There are relatively better parts of the UN - from which for now Inner City Press remains entirely banned by Guterres, without any due process. What other candidate would have done this? When youth leaders from South Sudan and DR Congo took questions on October 26, it was across the street from the UN and Inner City Press went to ask and live-stream. Video here. It asked about the performance of the UN Missions UNMISS and MONUSCO. Emilie Katondolo of the DRC's Young Women for Peace and Leadership said MONUSCO must do more to protect civilians, giving the killings in Beni as an example. Inner City Press before the October 26 noon briefing it was banned from for the 114th day in a row - and which featured not a single question on anything in Africa - asked Spokesman Stephane Dujarric and Farhan Haq, as well as USG Alison Smale who's banned it, "on deadline, what IS the UN doing? Also, from South Sudan Susan Kyunon Sebit William  told Inner City Press that UNMISS does not sufficiently protect civilians, particularly women, citing Terrain Hotel etc. What IS the UN doing? What did it learn?" Apparently nothing - these has been no answer. But it was an interesting GNWP event, with Lynrose Jane Dumandan Genon from the Philippines and Katrina Leclerk from Canada, where she says students in Manitoba have partnered with the Eastern Congo. Meanwhile today's UN bans press. When "the Role of Conventional Arms in Preventing Conflicts" was debated across First Avenue frm the UN on October 25, Inner City Press went, to ask a question. Video here. It asked UN Peacekeeping official Thomas Kontogeorgos what the UN has done about its negligent loss of weapons and ammunition - which Inner City Press asked about IN the UN before being banned as cover up by SG Antonio Guterres and his USG Alison Smale. Kontogeorgos to his credit answered, only somewhat evasively, that DPKO "provided inputs" to the Small Arms Survey, and now UNPOL passes information to INTERPOL (the disappearance of whose head Guterres has said nothing about, despite written questions from Inner City Press.). At the end of the IPI program, Youssef Mahmoud spoke about the elephant(s) in the room, selling arms. Afterward Dr. Mihaela Racovita of SAS told Inner City Press they are trying to make further inroads with DPKO, for example with the mission in Mali. We hope to have more on this - the lawless ban by Guterres and Smale, for reporting on UN corruption, is not helpful. But we will not stop. Back on September 5, hours after in the UN Security Council chamber UK Ambassador Karen Pierce said she supported the morning's meeting about Nicaragua due to refugee flows, across the street from the UN Inner City Press asked her why this logic didn't apply to the confict in the former British Southern Cameroons and the flight of Anglophones from state violence into Nigeria. Periscope video here.

     Pierce replied that a country is less likely to end up on the Security Council's agenda if it is taking some positive steps. But given 36 year Cameroonian head of state Paul Biya's torching of villages, what are his positive steps? A sceptic might point to the natural gas deal he signed with UK-based New Age, which UK Minister Liam Fox bragged around as showing UK companies can still get deals after Brexit.

   Also on the panel on the "Culture of Peace," moderated by Kevin Rudd, was Secretary General Antonio Guterres' head of policy planning Fabrizio Hochschild. When Inner City Press began a question to Hochschild, who had spoken with gruesome examples from Colombia of the need for opposing sides to humanize each other though “dignification,” Rudd cut it off.

Stepping off the crowded elevator at ground level Inner City Press endeavored to ask Hochschild the questions, both Cameroon and whether Guterres and his opaque Global Communicator Alison Smale, purporting to ban Inner City Press from the UN for life without once speaking with it, should engaged in some dignification. He declined to answer -- declined to dignify the question, so to speak -- then said “Ask Steph.”

It was a reference to Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric, who Smale has twice written would answer Inner City Press' question but who has refused to for a full week.

  This as Inner City Press, already banned from the UN for 64 days amid its questions on Guterres' inaction on Cameroon with the country's ambassador Tommo Monthe heading the UN Budget Committee, has an application pending to cover the UN General Assembly as it has for the past 11 years. Dignification, indeed. We'll have more on this.

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