At the
UN, Dow Chemical Protesters Detained and Media Sent on a Blue Planet Run
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN
UNITED NATIONS, June
1 -- As security guards detained two protesters carrying a banner criticizing
Dow Chemical's environmental record, the UN's Amir Dossal stood on a stage with
Dow's CEO Andrew Liveris, asking the crowd to clap for Liveris and for Dow.
Friday's
event on the UN's North Lawn was for Blue Planet Run, "presenting sponsor Dow,"
with the company's red diamond logo emblazoned on all the promotion materials.
As
Inner City Press reported in 2006,
when the UN's partnership with Dow was first announced at a luncheon reception
in the Delegates dining room, that day's Wall Street Journal quoted Mr. Dossal
praising Dow. Less than a month later, when a
protest took place across First Avenue
from the UN by victims of Dow Chemical's napalm,
apparently the UN-Dow partnership was not rethought.
Still,
the UN and Dow might well have foreseen that there might be a demonstration, or
at least the unfurling of a dissenting banner, at Friday's North Lawn event.
However, when this reporter sought to follow the two detained protesters with a
UN security official across the lawn, another guard ordered Inner City Press
"back to the event."
"I'm
covering the protest."
"Go back
to the event, Mr. Lee," the second security official ordered.
This is
less a criticism of the UN security personnel at issue than of the wider and
higher-up UN, for failing to give any guidance. The UN preaches free speech,
civil society and more recently environmental protection all over the world. But
in its own compound on Manhattan's East Side, those who unfurl a banner are
detained, and reporters who seek to cover the protest and detention are ordered
to leave the scene.
Mr.
Dossal, center, and Ban Ki-moon (Dow Chemical now shown)
The UN's
uncritical relationship with major corporations was on display just one day
earlier, in a May 31 luncheon hosted by Mr. Dossal and headlined by an official
from Coca-Cola. Handed out at the event were pamphlets about the UN Global
Compact and its upcoming Leaders Summit in Geneva on the 5th and 6th of July.
While Inner City Press is on record as requesting advance notice of Global
Compact events in UN Headquarters, and an opportunity to pose questions to
corporate executives who come for what often amount to photo-ops with UN
officials, the first and only alert of this event was in a flier Thursday
morning. Inner City Press did not attend the event itself, but spoke with
participants afterwards and was told that there was no mention during the
speeches that there is a widespread movement to expel Coca-Cola from college
campuses, due to such issues as the death of a union organizer in
Colombia
and alleged abuse of water rights in India and elsewhere. Similarly, at neither
of the UN's two events with Dow Chemical there any mention, other than in the
quickly re-furled banner, of Dow's record, including that it is being challenged
by Amnesty International for not addressing the Bhopal, India
poisoning issues it acquired along with Union Carbide.
It is one
thing for the UN to fail to be even handed, or use its bully pulpit, regarding
its partner corporations. It is yet another step to be unprepared for others'
criticism of these corporations' appearances on UN territory, to ham-handledly
detain peaceful protesters and then order UN-accredited media "back to the
event," and away from the detained protesters, right on the UN's North Lawn.
We will have more on this.
[At the
June 1 UN
noon briefing, Inner City Press asked for the UN's policy. Video
here.
Developing.]
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