In the mediation debate in the UN Security Council on August 29, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres who has banned Inner City Press from the UN since July 3 as it asked about his inaction on Cameroon said, “Since the beginning of my tenure, one of my key priorities has been a surge in diplomacy for peace… My special envoys and representatives pursue consultations, good offices, and formal talks, often alongside envoys and mediators from regional organizations or Member States.”

But simply as one pertinent example, what have Guterres and his envoy Francois Lounceny Fall accomplished amid the carnage in Southern Cameroons. Nothing – or worse. Fall equated secessionists with extremists, thereby providing UN ground cover for their targeting and killing. Guterres as Inner City Press has been informed by sources on the 38th floor and in the Department of Political Affairs decided to remain silent on the killing of Anglophones in order to curry favor with Cameroon’s Ambassador Tommo Monthe, chair of the UN Budget Committee in which Guterres wanted to push through proposal like his “Global Service Delivery Mechanism” which failed. This is the surge in diplomacy?

And, angry at Inner City Press’ coverage, rather than try to get mediation – a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Jose Ramos-Horta, has reached out to that effect – Guterres instead had Inner City Press roughed up right after it spoke with Tommo Monthe on July 3, and banned since, with the prospect of not banned from covering the General Assembly high level week for the first time in 11 years. What surge in diplomacy? It is censorship.

Culled from Inner Press