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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR Letter PFT Q&A, NY Post

UNITED NATIONS GATE, May 21 – Inner City Press on July 5 was banned from entering the UN, the day after it filed a criminal complaint against UN Security for physically removing it from covering the meeting about the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' $6.7 billion peacekeeping budget, as witnessed and essentially cheered on by senior UN official Christian Saunders, tearing its reporter's shirt, painfully and intentionally twisting his arm and slamming shut and damaging his laptop. On August 17, Guterres' Global Communicator Alison Smale issued a letter banning Inner City Press from the UN - for life. With no due process. She and Guterres have put the UN in the US Press Freedom Tracker, here. Smale said, again, that the UN would answer Press questions to the Spokesman Stephane Dujarric and his Office; Dujarric said the same on camera. On May 21 more than three hours before a UN noon briefing in which Dujarric held a colloquy with a pro-Guterres scribe who implied pro-China Guterres has any power to get North Korea's ship back for it, Inner City Press submitted 851 questions, including why it continues to be lawlessly banned from entering to ask questions in person: "There are more than 500+ questions UNanswered. And Monday Sept 17, Tuesday Sept 18, Wed Sept 19 and  Thurs and Fri Sept 21, that whole week, no questions answered. Nor Sept 25, nor 28th - nor October 2 nor 3. While appreciating and using what was belatedly sent on May 20 about sexual exploitation allegations and on March 28 in partial request to Inner City Press' questions about the UN bribery sentence of Patrick Ho of CEFC and CEFC's 2018 attempt to buy the oil company of Gulbenkian Foundation which paid the SG, no answers on Dec 17 or 18 or 19 or 20 or 21 - another FIVE days in a row, even as SG's direct conflicts of interest and failure to disclose emerge, and a newest low. No answers on January 30 nor 31 nor February 1 nor 4 nor 5 nor 6 nor 7 nor 11 nor 12 nor 13 nor 14 nor 15 nor 18 nor 19 nor 20 nor 21 nor 22 nor 25 nor 26 nor 27 nor March 1 - 27 (!) And now April 1, 3-30 (one answer in the entire month - corrupt), and now May 1-13, 15-17, many questions. No answers at all during those four days of the US v Ho trial showing corruption in the UN says it all. This ban is just censorship - and Inner City Press must be allowed back into the noon briefing to ask its questions in person and follow up on them.

May 21-1: On Cameroon, what is the SG's comment and action if any on that Member of Parliament Essomba Bengono has said on TV, "Do you know how many times God had to wipe out the human race to constitute a people? Do you know how many times? The number of alliances he made with man? He sais “I’m destroying Sodom and Gomorrah”. We are not counting the number of deaths, you understand?" 

May 21-2: On Turkey, what is the SG's comment and action is any on that  Turkish authorities ordered the arrest of 249 Foreign Ministry personnel over suspected links to the network accused of orchestrating an attempted coup in 2016? The Ankara chief prosecutor’s office said it ordered the arrest of those people the after investigations found “irregularities” in the Foreign Ministry’s past entrance exams. It said 78 suspects had been detained so far in operations across 43 provinces and that police were seeking the rest...

May 21-3: On Nigeria, what are the comments and actions if any of the SG and separately the DSG  on that in Nigeria the recent killing of a teenage girl (aged 18) caught in the crossfire between police and suspected kidnappers as well as the alleged fatal shooting of a cyclist and man who refused to pay bribes have brought to the fore police brutality in Nigeria?  All three incidents occurred in the commercial state of Lagos.     A subsequent national poll has revealed 77 percent of respondents stated that the issue of police brutality in Nigeria is prevalent. 

May 21-4: On Zimbabwe, what is the SG's comment and action if any on that four pro-democracy and human rights activists were arrested at the Harare International Airport following an article published by the state media that they were part of the group of locals being trained in regime change tactics. The four human rights campaigners namely George Makoni aged 38 years, Tatenda Mombeyarara aged 37 years, Gamuchirai Mukura aged 31 years and Nyasha Mpahlo aged 35 years were detained upon disembarking from a plane at Robert Mugabe International Airport on Monday 20 May 2019 and held for several hours without communication with their lawyers after authorities confiscated their mobile phone handsets and laptops. Zimbabwean authorities refused to allow lawyers representing the four human rights activists access to their clients.   The lawyers Roselyn Hanzi, Tinomuda Shoko and Godfrey Mupanga from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights only had access to their clients at Harare Central Police Station after nearly five hours from the time the human rights campaigners were in incommunicado detention at the airport. 

May 21-5: On press freedom (in courthouses) and Bangladesh, what is the SG's comment and action if any on that on 16 May the Bangladesh Supreme Court issued a notification restricting the publication of news on on-going cases? What is each of yours - particularly the SG's - response to the letter written and sent by Burundi activist Manisha Lievin? To the April 15 letter to the SG, DSG and USG Smale for which receipt has not even been acknowledged, other than a single lawless line from MALU: "Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M66561081, has been declined"? This is a formal request for the UN's explanation of grounds for this denied, and since SGcentral, the SG's chief of staff and Deputy SG and USG Smale haven't even confirmed receipt of the April 15 letter much less responded, for reconsideration. AGAIN, immediately explain how it is legitimate to ban from enter into the UN the media that has been asking about these and other questions, with no hearing or appeal.

May 20-1: On Sri Lanka, what is the SG's comment and action if any on that ten years since the end of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war, the government has failed to provide justice for the conflict's many victims. The Sri Lankan government pledged to provide justice for wartime abuses and to take other measures to promote respect for human rights in a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution adopted in October 2015. But there has been none to provide justice and accountability. What has the SG done? 

May 20-2: On UN OICT, what is the SG's comemnt and action if any on staff leaks to Inner City Press that, for eaxmple, Jonathan Fisher is another NYCHA transplant who was hired by Riazi at OICT immediately after he was fired from NYCHA.  He has served as a consultant at $67.00 per hour for 20 hours per week to rewrite memos and correspondence drafted by United Nations staff, because, according to Riazi,"their written English is so poor”.  Sources have stated that Fisher is a close friend and business partner of George Carrano, Riazi’s husband, and that Carrano and Fisher have collaborated while in NYCHA on producing an unauthorized book which used NYCHA official material, which has led to Fisher’s firing? 

May 17-1: On Burundi, what is the SG's comment and action if any on that Burundi's chief justice has ordered the seizure of property belonging to opposition activists accused of supporting a supposed coup plot against President Pierre Nkurunziza?  The order, signed late Tuesday, targets dozens of government critics accused of spearheading a failed challenge against Nkurunziza in May 2015, when he announced he would run for a controversial third term.  The property and assets belonging to 32 opposition leaders and journalists in exile, and nine jailed military officers, should be "exploited by the state", said the order co-signed by the Supreme Court chief justice and attorney general. 

May 16-2: On Sudan, what is the SG's comment and action if any that the new interim vice president, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagolo, was in charge of the janjaweed militias in Darfur? 

May 15-1: On China and the UN, beyond the ban on Taiwan journalists, what is the SG's explanation and/or action on that former political prisoners in China who now reside in the United States were informed by the UN accreditation desk in Geneva that they could not enter the premises without a passport from a UN member state. As political dissidents who have fled from China, the visitors did not have valid passports from the country? Dissidents who flee their home countries due to persecution are often not issued passports from their countries of refuge but are rather issued other valid forms of identification.  

May 15-3: On the Public Financial Disclosures for 2017 belatedly published over the weekend of April 27-28, please state why Mohammed Ibn Chambas, like the Executive Secretary of the UN Biodiversity Convention, Cristiana Paşca-Palmer, UNICEF's Henriette Fore, with documented links to ExxonMobil and others, USG Mark Lowcock (undisclosed while the Secretariat's speaker at the UNSC Arria on Cameroon), UNCTAD's Mukhisa Kituyi, UN Women's Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UNOG chief Michael Moller, UNDP chief Achim Steiner,  Heidi Mendoza, Adama Dieng, UN Security chief Peter Drennan, Rosemary DiCarlo and Nicholas Haysum, is not even on the list. OIOS chief Inga-Britt Ahlenius reported - why not Mendoza? Where IS Mendoza? Isn't it a bad practice for the UN's head (anti) genocide definition official to conceal from the public even cursory financial disclosure? Did DiCarlo decline to make any public disclosure despite being the UN's top political officer? What is the even plausible applicability of this line from SG Guterres' web page: "Please note that given the multi-cultural environment of the UN and the often security sensitive locations where UN staff are either working or come from, full public disclosure may not always be a viable or sensible option for certain staff members"? Why has Guterres changed the previous system in a which a "choosing not to disclose" statement was upload and listed, to one which helps conceal who reports and who does not?  Again, state why considering the UN bribery conviction of Patrick Ho of CEFC, and CEFC's attempt to purchase the oil company of Gulbenkian Foundation which paid Mr. Guterres in 2016 was omitted from his online public financial disclosure covering 2016, and why Guterres has not even started an audit of CEFC in the UN. 

May 2-1: On Indonesia, what is the SG's comment and action if any on the human rights lawyers taking the Indonesian police to court on behalf of West Papuans, in an unprecedented civil case over what she claims is the illegal takeover of an activist group’s headquarters?

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