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UN GATE, Dec 14 – The increasing corruption of the United Nations under Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and of the UN Correspondents Association he works with to intimidate and then rough up and ban the investigative Press, has been made clear today in a statement by former Ambassador of Sri Lanka Palitha Kohona, who has been accused of war crimes in the White Flags Killings, see below.

   On November 2, after Inner City Press' written questions to Guterres and his spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming, about Mahinda Rajapaksa, went entirely unanswered, a long time UNCA correspondent said the Tamils "should be more quiet." Video here. This is disgusting, today's UN and UNCA.

  Now on December 14, this call: "President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva, should explain in court why newly released government lists show hundreds of Sinhalese and Tamils went ‘missing’ in Matale in 1989 and Mullivaikal in 2009. Both men remain criminally liable under international and domestic law for enforced disappearances that occurred under their command and control. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was secretary of defense in 2009; Shavendra was a key divisional commander, who is now designated by the US government for credible allegations of gross violations of human rights.

 Recently released data from Sri Lanka’s Office of Missing Persons (OMP)2 shows that more than 330 Tamils are classified as having gone ‘missing’ from the final days of the war3 when the country was fully under the government’s control. The data also shows 154 Sinhalese from Matale Distict are regarded as having gone ‘missing’ in the last half of 1989 when Gotabaya was the District Military Coordinator there, and Shavendra his junior officer.

 Missing or Disappeared? The lists published by the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) blur the legal distinction between those who are missing and those who have been the subject of an enforced disappearance. Mixed in with hundreds of people who vanished in army custody are missing-in-action combatants and people who died in shelling incidents in the final war in 2009 but whose corpses were likely never identified. Likewise in Matale there is detailed testimony showing hundreds of youth were in police or army custody when last seen alive. Each individual’s loss in war is a tragedy but an enforced disappearance is an ongoing crime for which there is no statute of limitations under international law. It can be prosecuted at any time but the published lists obscure this important distinction.

Location of Disappearance The published lists from the OMP also do not accurately specify the location where someone disappeared. This obscures patterns that would help identify those responsible for clusters of disappearances at specific times and places4 .Tamils from all the districts of the north east would have been present in the Vanni in May 2009 and could have disappeared in the final days of the war but the OMP data is tabulated by district of origin which obscures how many went missing or disappeared in the final days of the war." The UN has failed on this, and Guterres keeps censoring.

Here from the UN noon briefing Guterres banned Inner City Press from for the 853rd day, with the collusion of the UN Censorship Alliance, is the transcript:

Question:  Yep. My question is that why, the Tamils, when the war is over and they're attacking past history, don't they try now to have a coalition, which is so key in international politics? If you continue eradicating the opposition long after there's peace in the country and it’s prospering, why are they, with this human rights question, still attacking the ones... the Tamils, why are they still not being more quiet?      

Spokesman:  As you know, we have supported dialogue among all the communities in Sri Lanka, and we continue to do that. And certainly, we believe that there has been some progress on this front in recent years, but much more does need to be done.      Sherwin, you have a question?       Sherwin, the floor is yours.       Sherwin, are you there?       Sherwin, if you're having problems un‑muting, you can write the question in chat, and I'll answer that way.       Okay. Sherwin is asking, is there any statement on the US election, given high levels of anxiety and growing fears of post‑election violence?       I don't have anything to say right now. Of course, we expect the election will go ahead tomorrow. If we have something to say on that day, we'll let you know then.       And if I see no other questions, I will now turn the floor over to Brenden Varma, who is at the podium."

  Notice that an UN big wig spoke right after his/their member's "the Tamils should be more quiet comment" and said nothing about it; Inner City Press and its Sri Lanka mass killing and UN collusion questions were banned. These people are in league with mass killing, in Sri Lanka as in Cameroon, and censoring to cover it up. This is today's UN - and UNCA.

 In an article he published in Asia Tribune, Kohona writes / admits once Inner City Press (he says, "the blogger") "began undermining Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, we mounted a quiet campaign against him within the UN press corps itself... information from our own sources was made available to many members of the UN press corps with a view to impugning the credibility of the man. It took a while, but his bravado unraveled when he fell afoul of the President of the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA), Giampaolo Pioli, who commenced proceedings to take him to court. Then he began to spar with a number of respected journalists who were beginning to approach us... The UN proceeded to evict him from the room that he was occupying and eventually from the UN itself." See Guterres action, continued by Melissa Fleming, here.
Both have been asked, including today, to explain - nothing, no response. They are corrupt.

  Who is Kohona referring to, as helping him? Well, as a first example - there are more - here's an article Inner City Press published at the time, with people who are still at the UN working with Guterres:

Pamela Falk of CBS told Inner City Press on February 22 that writing to the big media companies on the UN Correspondents Association board about their policies "could constitute a crime."

    As well as being the president of UNCA, which in 2012 tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, Falk is a lawyer -- but she did not specify what crime this would be.

   Nor would the UN, whose Media Accreditation boss Stephane Dujarric on February 27 filed a false complaint against Inner City Press for reporting Falk's comments.

   Shown that his complaint was false -- Inner City Press had said loudly, “you are on the record” and Falk said “he's going to write this up,” audio here -- Dujarric refused to retract it.

   Rather, another UNCA “leader,” Tim Witcher of Agence France Presse, along with Reuters' Michelle Nichols, filed their own false complaints with UN Security, apparently based on Inner City Press replying to Witcher hissing “lies and distortion” by saying, “lapdog.”  (Significantly, Falk on February 22 called Inner City Press "a mugger.")

    Despite repeated requests, the UN won't disclose even a summary of the complaints -- to which it has nonetheless twice in Kafka-esque form demanded a written response -- nor its rules for the filing of false or pre-textual complaints, as the New York Civil Liberties Union asked the chief of the UN Department of Public Information on July 5, 2012 regarding an ejection attempt by UNCA before Falk blithely took it over.

Those elections, those in UNCA, used by Kohona to oust Press:

Here are the December 2103 results, compared to votes in December 2011 for the "candidate" or their predecessor

   So - a war criminal used UNCA to get Inner City Press thrown out of its UN work space and then the UN, for undermining Guterres (who was also questioned by Inner City Press about Cameroon, and undisclosed financial links with UN briber CEFC China Energy). These people are (war) criminals. We'll have more on this - for now, here's more from Kohona (he does not disclose that he paid UNCA's Pioli money) --

"he published a story headed, 'Fish balls (his term for Sri Lankan fish cutlets) and wine to tempt the journalists'. ... He was also known to exchange information with diplomats at very important missions, some of whom had excellent sources within Sri Lanka. He was also a useful tool to some to embarrass the former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Subsequently, he began undermining Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

But we mounted a quiet campaign against him within the UN press corps itself with a view to exposing him and even forcing him to reveal his financiers.  Information from our own sources was made available to many members of the UN press corps with a view to impugning the credibility of the man. It took a while, but his bravado unraveled when he fell afoul of the President of the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA), Giampaolo Pioli, who commenced proceedings to take him to court. Then he began to spar with a number of respected journalists who were beginning to approach us for information on the man.

Eventually, he clashed with the Alison Smale, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, who declared that Lee’s “conduct has consistently breached” the UN’s media guidelines and “does not meet the established professional standards required of all correspondents granted access to United Nations premises.” As a result, his accreditation to cover the UN was withdrawn consistent with the terms of the US – UN Head Quarters Agreement (Agreement Between the United Nations and the United States Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations, Signed June 26, 1947, and Approved by the General Assembly October 31, 1947). The UN proceeded to evict him from the room that he was occupying and eventually from the UN itself." 

What will CPJ, David Kaye, RSF et al do? Watch this site.

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