Petition updateWe demand the UN restore Inner City Press' access to the UN as a Resident CorrespondentEnd-game? UN Sets April 6 Final Eviction Day, Gallach Says You Cover The Wrong Things
UNfree Press
Mar 31, 2016
On March 30 a final eviction order to Inner City Press was signed by UN official Cristina Gallach, http://www.innercitypress.com/unevict1icpgallach.pdf. Later as Inner City Press was live-streaming Periscope from the UN Security Council stakeout, openly and with UN guard trying to dictate what could not be said, Gallach approached and defended the ouster, with Periscope she'd seen still rolling https://youtu.be/lDlzJc96sVg Since she has set the block running on end-game, and there has been no response from those above her, official email addresses to write to are below. Gallach's letter no longer claims what she told some who asked, from Washington and even Sri Lanka, that despite seizing office to punish Inner City Press it would have the same access as before. Now she only says Inner City Press will / would have the same access as other non-Resident Correspondents. This is censorship, hindering Inner City Press reporting on UN corruption (apparently she and other superiors' goal) and topics on the UN Security Council agenda, from Western Sahara to South Sudan to Syria to Eritrea to Yemen and Burundi. On the same as Gallach's eviction order, telling, the UN belatedly admitted more serious rapes by the Burundian contingent in the Central African Republic. So: as Ban Ki-moon's UN descends into scandals of bribery and peacekeeper rapes, its main Communications focus is evicting Inner City Press. This petition should be sent and signed wider but any other help or support at all will be appreciated. Since there has been no response from those “upstairs” at the UN, they are sgcentral@un.org, his chief of staff mulet@un.org and of course gallach@un.org. Please let us know what if anything they say. On March 30, despite having been petitioned to stop her censorship and hindering of the Press' reporting by, among others, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jose Ramos Horta, Tamils of Sri Lanka and elsewhere including a Northern Provincial Councilor, over one thousand petition signers and commenters, Ambassadors and UN officials and, it seems, Jeffrey Sachs, Gallach nevertheless had delivered to Inner City Press a final eviction letter, below. Then after having the eviction order delivered to Inner City Press by the acting head of her Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit -- which rebuffed a request to come into the UN from the outside and actually film what Gallach is misrepresenting, from the ludicrous claim Inner City Press “hid” in a glassed-in, entirely visible interpreters' booth to the non-functioning of its cut non-Resident Correspondent pass at the turnstile to the second floor of the UN Conference Building -- Gallach on the afternoon of March 30 approach Inner City Press as it openly Periscope filmed at the Security Council stakeout. That Inner City Press was openly filming is clear from the video itself: a UN Security guard tells it it cannot step a single foot beyond the Security Council stakeout without a MALU escort or minder (censorship), then critiques its Periscope voice-over about censorship, saying You know you can't do that. But Inner City Press, while to accommodate the censorship guard suspending its voice-over, continued openly filming with its phone held high, as a UN tour guide told a group including Cristina Gallach and her assistant Darrin Farrant that the replica of Picasso's Guernica was lent to the UN by the Rockefellers. As the group, at another of Gallach's deputy's suggestions, went in to tour the Security Council chamber itself, Gallach came over to where Inner City Press stood openly filming. Viewers can reach their own conclusion about what Gallach said; in fairness to her we have uploaded the entire file, here, despite some sound quality issues (to put it mildly). To Inner City Press it is outrageous that the UN's Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information, while insisting it is fair to strip Inner City Press of its long time office and ability to cover events on the UN's second floor, including the Office of the President of the General Assembly on which even Ban and his lawyer issued a report on March 29, excuses and does nothing about the head of the UN Correspondents Association having come to the UN Security Council stakeout on March 24 and four times loudly called Inner City Press an “a*hole.” https://soundcloud.com/innercitypress/uncas-pioli-calls-inner-city-press-an-asshle-at-unsc-after-icp-reports-on-unca-corruption Gallach's excuse for UNCA's Giampaolo Pioli, whose bidding (along with the bidding of other very senior personalities at and in the UN) she is doing, is that Inner City Press is said to photograph or cover the wrong things while at the stakeout, things that Gallach thinks are not news worthy. Is UNCA giving indicted Ng Lap Seng a photo op with Ban Ki-moon not newsworthy? Is a member of the UN Secretariat giving advance information to privileged corporate media not newsworthy? Who is Cristina Gallach to decide what the Press can or cannot photograph or cover when it is at the UN Security Council stakeout? Does Cristina Gallach, with the power to evict the Press, even watch the UN's daily noon briefing? Does she know that those she is working for don't even go, don't ask any questions, in some cases don't write any articles and do unrelated commercial business in the office space she leaves them with, while evicting Inner City Press for retaliation? Inner City Press has tried to discuss all this with Cristina Gallach; her retaliatory mantra, with no respect for freedom of the press, remains the same. So this is on Ban Ki-mooon. There is a week - or now, six days...
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