From Matthew Russell Lee’s  Inner City Press.
 http://www.innercitypress.com/unngo3cred…

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UNITED NATIONS, November 23 — After first taking the entry pass of a non governmental organization which spoke at the General Assembly stakeout after the vote on the Goldstone report on Gaza and then denying it, the UN on November 23 announced that the entry pass would be restored.

As Inner City Press first reported, the NGO was asked to sign a statement or “admission” that it had broken “some security rules.” The initially offered statement alleged a political basis for the expulsion, but the UN refused the statement. Now that has apparently been sanitized. Such is victory at the UN.

{The Inner City Press website did follow this issue as it always does when it senses CENSORSHIP and DENNIAL OF THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION within the UN system. We post here some of the investigative reporting on matters of  Arab and China hold on the UN via their watchdogs based at the UN Department of Public Information (DPI). Some people doing business at the UN are afraid of saying something that would infuriate these rulers over DPI.  (comment of www.SustainabiliTank.info editor)}
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UN Finally Admits Barring NGO After GA Stakeout Speech, Cites Technicality, Precedent Not Needed

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 20 — Days after denying it had stripped the entry pass of a non governmental organization representative who spoke November 5 at the General Assembly stakeout microphone after the Assembly’s vote on the Goldstone report on Gaza, the UN on November 19 reversed itself and acknowledged the action.

Inner City Press, which covered the expulsion on November 5 and later asked the UN to confirm it, on November 19 asked for the reason and precedent for the stripping of credentials. Outgoing spokesperson Michele Montas denied that speaking at the GA microphone was the reason, but could not cite any precedent for expelling an NGO for a minor entry violation.

The Wall Street Journal of November 20 chimed in on the topic, citing this reporter’s work. Some wondered if the UN only confessed to the expulsion because of inquiries by the WSJ; other hearkened back to a meeting by five senior UN officials, including Ms. Montas, as which legal action against both the WSJ and Inner City Press was discussed.

The UN likes to expel its critics, then deny doing so.

{We would say – the UN expels critics that anger the thought police at the UN DPI – then deny doing so.}

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From this week’s transcripts on l’affaire Bayefsky:

November 16: Could you give us a status report on Anne Bayefsky, whether her credentials have been restored, or whether there is a plan to restore them or…?

Associate Spokesperson Haq: No, no. Her credentials and the credentials of her organization are not changed at this stage. She belongs to a non-governmental organization. It’s possible in the future that there could be a review, but at this stage there has been no removal of credentials from that non-governmental organization or from Ms. Bayefsky.

Then on November 18, Inner City Press asked

Inner City Press: you’d said, regarding this non-governmental organization that had the pass stripped after speaking in front of the General Assembly the day of the Goldstone Report vote. I think you said on Monday, there has been no change in the status, but I spoke to the person and they can’t get into the building. So can you explain how what you say is consistent with the person actually not having their pass, and who made the decision to remove it and what the process is to follow up on that?

Associate Spokesperson: Well, the accreditation of the NGO has not changed. That non-governmental organization is still accredited with ECOSOC [Economic and Social Council]. In terms of pass cards, I believe their passes had been taken at the time of the incident that occurred when they spoke without authorization. I believe that those were being kept so the NGO could then pick them up. So I believe the NGO can pick up those passes once more. That’s what I was informed.

Inner City Press: Okay. Because the person says they were asked to fill out a statement and if they didn’t turn it in exchange for getting the pass, then the pass was never returned. I just wanted to clear that up, since you’d said that there had been no change, that was your understanding.

Associate Spokesperson: As far as I am aware, the NGO is an accredited NGO, so it’s still entitled to have passes. Until that changes, they have accreditation through ECOSOC.

Then on November 19, Spokesperson Montas reversed course, and Inner City Press followed up:

Spokesperson Montas: We were asked about the situation of a pass card belonging to Anne Bayefsky yesterday. We have received some information from the Department of Safety and Security (DSS) about the matter, and I’d like to make the following clarification:

On Thursday, 5 November 2009, at approximately 1800 hours, Ms. Anne Bayefsky, an accredited member of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Non-Govermental Organization (NGO) Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, utilized her UNHQ-issued building pass in an unauthorized manner at the security turnstiles to grant access to Mr. Joel B. Pollak into restricted areas of the Headquarters complex. Further, Ms. Bayefsky transferred her Geneva-issued UN building pass to Mr. Pollak, in whose possession it was discovered. Based on these breaches of security protocol, both passes were retrieved. The outcome of the security inquiry will be forwarded by DSS to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs/ECOSOC for their determination as to final disposition. So I hope this clarifies what was said yesterday. We got more information today on the issue.

…Inner City Press: On the announcement or the clarification that you gave on this Bayefsky pass — and thanks for that — I just wanted to know two things. One is, is there no relation between this continued suspension of the pass and the person speaking at the General Assembly stakeout on 5 November? Because that seemed to trigger the incident, and…

Spokesperson: Well that was part of it. I gave you the two issues that were pending in terms of the security breach, and I already said about the intervention in front of the Security Council stakeout that it was a matter for… Whoever speaks at the stakeout has to be introduced either by a Member State or by an organization within the UN system. An NGO cannot step up unless that person is accompanied by a Member State, cannot step up to the microphone and just make a statement.

Inner City Press: No, no, I understand that, I just want to know if that’s part of the basis for the suspension of the pass or…?

Spokesperson: No, I already said what the basis was.

Inner City Press: Okay.

Spokesperson: …the introduction of someone with a pass that was hers.

Inner City Press: And has DSS ever run across a similar situation with other NGOs and not suspended their passes?

Spokesperson: Not that I know of. In every case where there is a security breach the passes are temporarily suspended until the case is fully investigated.

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UN Claims “No Removal of Credential” of NGO Barred Since Stakeout Speech.

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 16 — Eleven days after a non-governmental organization’s representative had her UN identification pass taken away for speaking at the General Assembly stakeout microphone, UN Associate Spokesperson Farhan Haq was asked if her credentials had been restored.

“There’s been no removal of the credentials of Ms. Bayefsky or her organization,” Haq claimed, on camera. Video here, from Minute 17. But a simply phone call to Ms. Bayefsky reveals that her I.D. card, required to gain access to the UN complex, has not been returned. [Click here for Inner City Press' first exclusive report of Ms. Bayefsky's ejection from the UN.]

Ms. Bayefsky told Inner City Press of that after her pass was confiscated by UN Security, she was asked to draft and sign a written statement, after which her pass would be returned to her. She spent more than two hours writing the statement, and included in it a comment by a UN Security official that “the Palestinian Observer was very upset” at what she had said at the microphone, after the Assembly’s vote on the Goldstone report about Gaza.

Then, Ms. Bayefsky say, the UN through Security official Anne Hammenrudh no longer wanted her to sign or turn in the statement. Rather, she was told that the matter would be referred to the Assembly’s Committee on Non Governmental Organizations, which doesn’t meet until the end of January. [Click here for previous Inner City Press coverage of the Committee on NGOs.]

So while Ms. Bayefsky is, for now, barred from the UN for the rest of the year, UN Spokesperson Farhan Haq says “her credentials are not changed” and “there’s been no removal of credentials.”

In the very same briefing, Haq explained of the UN’s removal of a poster about Chinese Web censorship from its Internet Governance Forum in Egypt that the poster was “already on the floor, face up” and that the UN “folded it, undamaged.” Still, the poster and its message were removed, just like Ms. Bayefsky.

{Let us mention here that we were informed that Michelle Montas, the spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will not get her contract renewed as Spokesperson and will be moved to a different post at DPI.}

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UN’s Velvet Glove Censorship of Poster on Great Firewall of China, “Folded, Undamaged.”

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 16 — After the UN in Egypt removed a poster protesting Chinese web censorship from its Internet Governance Forum, at its headquarters in New York its Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq told Inner City Press the poster was “folded up… undamaged.”

Haq said solemnly, “No UN official was involved in throwing the poster on the floor.” He confirmed that the UN removed the poster, but said it was “on the floor, face up” when the UN demanded its removal.

On the other hand, a delegate at the Internet Governance Forum has been quoted that “the poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many.”

A more authoritative account: “The UN officials… asked us to remove it and one of our staff placed it on the ground for us to consider what to do. That’s where we had the discussion. When we refused to remove it, their security guards bundled it up and took it away.”

The UN’s Haq explained the incident by stating that the group which unfurled the poster about censorship had, earlier in the conference, distributed an “unauthorized” flier for a movie about Tibet. Haq said this was prohibited by the UN, because it was a “political issue not related to the Internet Governance Forum.”

But isn’t web censorship an issue “related to the Internet Governance Forum”?

In fact, as Inner City Press has exclusively reported, the UN in New York uses filtering software which has blocked such web sites as (China’s) Anti-CNN.com.

The poster contained the sentence: “The first generation of internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key internet gateways; China’s famous ‘Great Firewall of China’ is one of the first national Internet filtering systems.”

Inner City Press, which in full disclosure has its own experience with UN attempts to censor, click here, asked the UN’s Haq at Monday’s noon briefing to confirm that the above-quoted poster concerned internet censorship but no confirmation had been provided.

SustainabiliTank has its own history of being on the black list of the censor heads at DPI – that department is clearly a UN disgrace – they serve the interests of their countries of origin.