UNcensored
3:
Banned From
All UN
Premises,
Watching Scam
Briefing From
the Park
By
Matthew
Russell Lee,
Series started
here
UNITED NATIONS,
February 8 – After being thrown
out of the UN by eight
Security officers for trying
to cover an event in the UN
Press Briefing Room,
I was back on First Avenue
first thing Monday morning, to
try to get signed into the UN
as a guest by another
correspondent.
But at the
door for the pass and sign-in
office, one Security officer
told us he'd been asked to be
on the look-out for just this.
“You can wait inside,”
the guard said. “But I have to
call my supervisor.” It was
nearing 10 am, when the
Security Council meeting would
start. I looked in my notebook
for Spokesman Stephane
Dujarric's phone number and
dialed it: voice mail. I
left a message, I am being
blocked from even entering as
a guest.
Then the officer's
supervisor showed up, Matthew
Sullivan was his name. I'd written
about him before, not
unsympathetically, after he
got a rib broken by Turkey's
Erdogan's bodyguards out of
control. (Ban Ki-moon ended up
apologizing to Erdogan for the
incident, and putting Sullivan
on paid leave, another of
Ban's profiles in courage.)
But Sullivan was in a
fighting mood today.
“C'mon Matty,” he told me.
“You know you can't be in
here. You're banned from all
UN premises.” Audio
here.
Actually, I didn't know
that. I told him all I wanted
to do at that point was try to
cover the Security Council
meeting by watching the
webcast, could I do it in
here?
“No, you have to
leave,” Sullivan said. Next
thing I knew I was out on
First Avenue again. Yet
another UN correspondent
called me and I told him what
was happening.
“I always thought
they'd do this to you,” he
said. “I wonder why it took
them so long.”
I got to the park
on 43rd Street right across
from the UN, Ralph Bunche
Park, they call it, and I set
up shop on the base of a metal
monument there. The UN's wi-fi
didn't even reach out to the
street, so I used my cell
phone's hotspot. I uploaded
the audio of Sullivan saying,
“You're banned from all UN
premises;” I tried to listen
to and live-tweet the Security
Council meeting on Syria.
Finally I watched the
day's noon briefing. Dujarric
from his mushroom-like wooden
podium called on a seemingly
eternal United
Nations Correspondents
Association board
member, Masood Haider of
Pakistan's Daily Dawn.
“I want to know about
that blogger Matthew Lee,”
Masood said. “He is spewing
all kinds of allegations on
the Internet, some of them not
true. What is his status?” Video here.
Dujarric welcomed this
question, this colloquy, and
replied, “Matthew should come
back in and remove his
belongings.” I sat in
the park across the street,
now shouting at my laptop. I
was told I couldn't enter the
UN. How could they use the UN
noon briefing to talk about my
accreditation status, without
any right of reply?
There was, of course,
Twitter and I used it. Soon my
phone was out of power and my
hotspot growing weak. I had to
find another place to work and
headed inland. The public
library on 46th Street had a
second floor with children's
book and some raised tables
looking across the street at a
restaurant called Aretsky's
Patroon. I plugged in my
laptop and kept plugging. This
would not be a short fight, it
was starting to dawn on me.
Like Pakistan's Daily Dawn.
From the public library
branch on 46th Street I
started writing to all the UN
officials I knew. To be
continued...
***
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