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As UN Bans Inner City Press It E-Asks Spox Dujarric of Coronavirus China Breakdown Mali Maduro Honduras JOH Cameroon UN Rapes HK Fleming Bans Press 2000+ UNanswered

By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - CJR - PFT

UN GATE / SDNY COURT, March 27 –  Inner City Press on 5 July 2018 was banned from entering the UN, two day after it was physically removed from conducting interviews outside meeting about the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' $6.7 billion budget.

  Then Guterres' Department of Global Communication, run by Melissa Fleming, issued a letter banning Inner City Press from the UN - for life. With no due process, no right of appeal.  Guterres has put the UN in the US Press Freedom Tracker, here. Guterres' Spokesman Stephane Dujarric falsely promised on camera that he would be answering banned Inner City Press' questions - but see below.

     On March 27 before another penthouse apartment UN noon briefing by Stephane "French Whine" Dujarric, this one even more amateurish than before, video here and here, after a briefing with China which stalled out as Guterres spoke and lied, here and here, Inner City Press submitted yet more questions, by email and WhatsApp (blocked by Dujarric's screener Florencia Soto Nino on +1 917 226 7816) including asking the basis on which it continues to be lawlessly banned from entering to ask questions in person. Inner City Press asked:

March 27-1: On the Coronavirus Covid-19 and the March 25 fundraiser, why is there no disclosure of USG Melissa Fleming among the most recent public financial disclosures? Why none for Mark Lowcock? None for Henriette Fore? How can the UN raise money on this opaque basis? Please explain the break down of today's GA/ECOSOC/UNSC meeting livestream, and how questions were selected. What are SG Guterres responses to this, from US Sen Rubio and Rep McCaul? "“In January, the WHO parroted the Chinese Communist Party’s lie that there was no evidence coronavirus could be spread from person to person, blocked Taiwan – which had been warning about person to person transmission – from an emergency health meeting, and failed to quickly declare the outbreak a public health emergency,” Rubio wrote.  “The actions of the Chinese Communist Party exacerbated the public health crisis plaguing the international community, and instead of prioritizing global health, Dr. Tedros and the WHO played favoritism to China,” he continued  Rep. Michael McCaul told RCP that China “has launched a shadow campaign to gain and wield influence at the United Nations” and, he continued, the WHO has fallen victim to those efforts. He noted how the CCP covered up the coronavirus, and he complained about how China has tried, through disinformation campaigns, to blame the United States for manufacturing the virus in a lab.  “Now, hundreds of thousands are sick, and thousands have died. That does not deserve accolades from the WHO,” McCaul said. “It deserves condemnation.” "AGAIN: please immediately state the conditions and mitigation for the lay off of all Delegates Dining Room staff which Inner City Press reported yesterday after being contacted by staff complaining there is no mitigation of economic harm. On the other hand, please immediately respond to this: On 12 March 2020, UN Office for Disarmament Affairs released a P-3 political affairs officer temporary vacancy.  This announcement is extraordinary when most of the conferences and projects are put on hold. The job description and requirement criteria, which ought to be specific and tailored to the position, is so surprisingly generic and basic that 100,000 people in the Secretariat Building fit the requirement.   Since 10 March,2020, a total of three P-3 temporary vacancies in New York have been released, including this one. Disarmament has been in stalemate for decades. Let's keep our fingers crossed that breakthrough can be made through ODA's recruitment at this crucial juncture.     'Rumors' say that the position belongs to Mr. Q, a Chinese, whose current JPO (Junior Professional Officer) contract will end in early April 2020." 

March 27-1a: What are SG Guterres' comments and actions if any on the indictment of Maduro on drug charges, and again what were Gutterres' discussions with Honduras president JOH, whose brother has been convicted in the SDNY of drug trafficking and has himself been alleged to be a conspirator? What about the money your office bragged about from Honduras, given the proof JOH took money from El Chapo? 

March 27-2: On Cameroon, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on the holding of an "election" in NW and SW during this Coronavirus crisis? Why did Guterres "take note" of Guinea vote, but not Cameroon? What is his comment and action if any on that the personal engagement of President Paul Biya in the fight against COVID-19 has been questioned by most Cameroonians who say he has been very absent compared to his colleagues accross the Continent. President Paul Biya apart from a recent tweet during which he called on citizens to be calm and respect government’s measures, has neither addressed the issue nor disbursed financial assistance promised by government to effectively fight COVID-19. The financial assistance package is still awaited. Yet again,  immediately disclose whose question was cited by Stephane Dujarric in the in-person noon briefing as having been asked triggering condemnation of one-death bombing attributed, rightly or wrongly, to non Paul Biya forces? How is your approach not propaganda, censorship and a cover up of the Biya's government's mass killings? And, on Coronavirus, a medical staff in Yaounde says “the figures the Minister has given do not match with the real figures.”  Among the many contaminated he says include health workers in facilities hosting COVID-19 patients. “The issue of the President of the National Assembly being contaminated is true,” he says, citing other government officials and some of their family members.     “Presently, I’m not exaggerating, the true figures are about 560… and it is just the start” he explains. Official government figures, however, remain at 66 

March 27-2a: On China, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres on that three Chinese human rights lawyers, Mr. Ding Jiaxi, Mr. Zhang Zhongshun and Mr. Dai Zhenya, have been held by authorities in a form of detention called Residential Surveillance in a Designated Location (RSDL) since they were arrested for attending an informal weekend gathering in the city of Xiamen. At the gathering, they discussed the situation of civil society and politics in China with other lawyers and activists 

March 27-3: On Guinea, what are the comments and actions of SG Guterres, beyond "taking note," on that opposition activists in Guinea say at least 10 people have been killed in street clashes during Sunday's controversial referendum on a new constitution.  Critics said the vote was a ploy by President Alpha Condé to stay in power beyond his mandate.  The deaths occurred in the capital, Conakry, where police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators.  Opposition supporters attacked the police, burned polling centres and destroyed voting equipment.  Mr Condé, 82, insists the new constitution will bring about positive reforms, especially for women.  Many people say they are worried about the vote taking place during the coronavirus outbreak. 

March 27-3a: On Mali, what is the UN's response to that an ethnic militia in Mali massacred over 35 villagers on February 14, 2020 after government troops left the area, Human Rights Watch said today. The killings in the village of Ogossagou occurred hours after village leaders alerted government officials that the Malian army had vacated a post created following the March 23, 2019 massacre of 150 people in the same village, and an hour after a United Nations peacekeeper convoy had passed through. How is this not UN failure? What is the UN doing to try to find Cisse and his party? 

March 27-3b: On the DRC and total lack of trust in the UN, what are the comment and actions of SG Guterres on reports that "civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are resisting the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers despite imminent attacks by rebel groups in the region.  The resistance is the aftermath of a fallout between residents in the town of Beni and the UN Mission for Stabilisation in the Congo (MONUSCO).  This after residents accused the peacekeepers of failure to protect them from repeated attacks" 

March 27-3c: On Qatar, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres on that nine migrant labourers working on the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar died in 2019, the “supreme committee” organising the event has announced, bringing the number of deaths on World Cup projects to 34, since construction began six years ago.  31 of the deaths, including the nine who died last year, are classified as “non-work related”, a term the supreme committee uses to describe deaths that largely occur off the worksite, most of which are attributed to sudden and unexplained cardiac or respiratory failure.    

March 27-4: On UN bribery, again, what are the comments or actions if any of SG Guterres on the March 11 appellate argument by convicted UN briber Patrick Ho of CEFC China Energy in the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals? Why has SG Guterres not amended his disclosure covering 2016 which omit payments from Gulbenkian Foundation which tried to sell its oil company to CEFC? Separately, again, why is there no disclosure of USG Melissa Fleming among the most recent public financial disclosures? Why none for Mark Lowcock? None for Henriette Fore? How can the UN raise money on this opaque basis? 

March 27-5: On corruption and Angola, on which you refused to answer yesterday, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres on the Luanda Leaks exposure of Isabel dos Santos of Angola, and as Inner City Press has repeatedly asked, what are his comments and action on the repeated retweeting of Isabel dos Santos' denials by his close staffer Aguinaldo Baptista? After, for example, exposure of the corrupt urban development project near Luanda for which some 3,000 families were driven from their homes to make way for the development? And now after The Portuguese bank EuroBic has announced it will end its business relationship with Africa's richest woman, Isabel dos Santos. 

March 27-6: Immediately describe the role of Angola and the dos Santos family in the campaign of Antonio Guterres to become UNSG. 

March 27-7: On UN sexual exploitation and abuse - alleged - as Inner City Press requested before noon briefing on March 9, immediately provide all if-asked / further information immediately provide the if-asked information about the new sex abuse cases data dumped at 11 am on March 9, involving sexual abuse by peacekeeper from Cameroon in CAR, Pakistan in Darfur, Tanzania in DRC,  and still UN rape in DRC by Guatemala "peacekeeper," and abuse by Senegal in Haiti, and Gabon and Mauritania in CAR, etc and as Inner City Press asked in writing in 2019 without response, the if-asked information for the report of UN rape in Darfur data dumped to Conduct and Discipline website on the morning of January 17 and the "if asked" information about the two new cases of sexual exploitation in CAR by Cameroonian UN "Police" that were put online after 5 pm on December 30 (a day when you refused to answer 7 questions including on previous UN rapes), and the (Dec 19) rape case by a UN Volunteer in DRC in June 2019 - what nationality? What's been done for the victim(s)? and the Dec 9 sex abuse cases in CAR by Gabon, DRC and Morocco UN "peacekeepers, and the Dec g  about the Office of the Special Envoy for the Sahel, and the two more November 26, 3 pm cases of sexual exploitation in CAR by Cameroon troops in September 2019 (!)

March 27-8: On SG Guterres' Town Hall in Geneva, on which you refused Inner City Press' Dec 20 question, what is your summary of what SG Guterres said given that Inner City Press has now publishing more of it? Please explain SG Guterres' statement that interns should not (ever) be paid, and how this is not create unfair advantage for the most affluent?

March 27-9: As previously and repeated asked, where has UNSG Antonio Guterres been for the past week(s), and how much public money has he spent? Is he going directly to and from Pakistan? Previously from Addis? Or any stop overs? At what cost? Now, immediately disclose any and all costs to the UN including UN Security on the New York trip by Catarina Vaz Pinto Guterres on February 27 - March 1 (or longer). 

March 27-10: On press freedom and China, what are the comments and actions if any of SG Guterres and separately USG Melissa Fleming on that public broadcaster RTHK has faced increasing pressure from pro-Beijing politicians. Its director, Leung Ka-wing, was summoned by several CPPCC National Committee members, forcing him to cancel two shows, HK Connection and Headliner

More here.

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