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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
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UN GATE / SDNY COURT, March 31 – Faced with the Coronavirus crisis that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at first tried to cover up, as he did the UN bribes of convicted CEFC China Energy, the UN Security Council went dark for most of March 2020: no meetings.  

 Now on April 6 from US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, this: "We are seriously concerned by reports of the PRC’s sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.  This incident is the latest in a long string of PRC actions to assert unlawful maritime claims and disadvantage its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea.  Since the outbreak of the global pandemic, Beijing has also announced new “research stations” on military bases it built on Fiery Cross Reef and Subi Reef, and landed special military aircraft on Fiery Cross Reef.  The PRC has also continued to deploy maritime militia around the Spratly Islands.  China’s Nine-Dashed Line was deemed an unlawful maritime claim by an arbitral tribunal convened under the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention in July 2016, a position shared by the U.S. Government.  We call on the PRC to remain focused on supporting international efforts to combat the global pandemic, and to stop exploiting the distraction or vulnerability of other states to expand its unlawful claims in the South China Sea." What will Guterres say? Inner City Press will ask, but as with the UN bringing Coronavirus to South Sudan, there will be no answer if the censorious past is any guide.

 The Security Council, presided over by China in March, belatedly restarted - but only in secret. Other members, which purport to care about press freedom and transparency but did nothing when UNSG Guterres had Inner City Press roughed up and banned, now 637 days, are reduced to sending out emails like this: "Press statement by Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom  31 March 2020     Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom are deeply concerned by the repeated testing of missiles, using ballistic missile technology, by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on 2, 9, 21 and 29 March (local Korea time). The DPRK has conducted 17 sets of such launches since May 2019, including the four launches this month.     These launches illustrate the DPRK’s continued efforts to develop its ballistic missile programs and expand its arsenal, including of short-range ballistic missiles. The DPRK has also continued to operate its nuclear weapon program. The UN Panel of Experts working on the DPRK has continuously highlighted such actions.     We condemn such provocative actions. They undermine regional security and stability, as well as international peace and security, and are in clear violation of unanimously adopted UN Security Council resolutions.     We continue to urge the DPRK to engage in good faith in meaningful negotiations with the United States aimed at denuclearization, to take concrete steps to abandoning all weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, and to refrain from further provocations.     There is no other way to achieve security and stability on the Korean Peninsula. Continued provocations risk undermining the prospect for successful negotiations.     It is vital that the Security Council ensures full implementation of its resolutions and that sanctions remain in place. We call on the international community to comply with the obligation to strictly enforce these sanctions, including by reporting on their implementation in accordance with the resolutions adopted by the Council." Does this have any more weight than these government's / missions' claims to be for press freedom and transparency at the UN?

 There was to have been an open meeting on March 23 about the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country the UN has been in for two decades with little impact except mounting and deserved distrust from the Congolese. Photo here

 All month Inner City Press in writing has asked Guterres and his home-bound spokesman Stephane Dujarric about the refusal of the residents of Beni to put up with a deployment of the MONUSCO peacekeepers who have failed so often, while also raping children and young women, which Guterres also covers up.  

Guterres did not answer and Dujarric's response to to block Inner City Press on WhatsApp, through which he said he would answer questions from his penthouse apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side right near Gracie Mansion.

  Now China has set the DR Congo meeting for March 24 - it is virtual, which might be fine, except that it has been shifted from an open meeting to be shown on UNTV where Congolese could see it to an informal meeting not even listed on China's program of work.   Photo here.

This is corrupt and untransparent, like Guterres. And it comes after Guterres gave the UN's Great Lakes envoy post to Chinese operative Huang Xia. 

Just as CEFC China Energy used Guterres' UN to pay bribes to President of the General Assembly Sam Kutesa for oil and bank deals in Uganda, and brought a box of cash and offered weapons to Chad's Idriss Deby for an oil concession, China's deals in the DRC have now been taken private with the complicity of other UNSC members.

 This is Guterres UN - a place of corruption and censorship of Press, from which Dujarric, Guterres and Melissa Fleming have banned Inner City Press now 628 days.

 Even as we cover the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in which CEFC's Patrick Ho was convicted, we will not rest. Watch this site - but not, apparently, UNTV except for Dujarric's social club of censorship "noon briefings." 

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