"the UN department of public information's least-favourite journalist "

Always a good qualification for a journalist, to be unpopular with those he reports on (might show he gets near the truth).

when it goes under please give the guy a job..

So the other journalists really want to get rid of him because he is getting better stories & scooping them.

Matthew Lee, yer daze r numbad
Employment Law gerrin' changed & whistlblowaz gerrin' no protection, - yer workplan will be subject to change on a daily basis, most probably affecting your output, and there'll be other means by which they will usher u 2 the door. The Language used in 2daze Democracy ring hollow round yer cell ! Bless this fella !

Mr Greenslade:

It is these personal disputes that lie at the heart of the UNCA investigation.

GRAMMAR, my dear fellow, the GRAMMAR!

Tsk tsk!
Tut tut!
Tch tch!
Etc.

UN is on the footsteps of Rajapaksa!!

Rajapaksa doesn't have to defend himself for eliminating Journos anymore as he can rely on the precedent set by Ban Ki Moon's office.

:-)

So you want him to follow Bangalore Grammar?

Dear colleagues,

Following is a letter agreed today by the UNCA Executive Committee by a vote of 13 to 1.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear UNCA members,

This letter represents the position of the UNCA Executive Committee as agreed on June 14, 2012. It is for UNCA members only.

Five members of the UNCA Executive Committee recently requested the establishment of a Board of Examination (Article 6 of the UNCA constitution) to investigate allegations of harassment and unethical behavior by Matthew Lee, the writer and publisher of Inner City Press. The Executive Committee decided by a vote of 13-1 (One member was absent and Matthew Lee was the sole dissenting vote) on June 1, 2012 to establish that Board of Examination.

The Executive Committee believes that Matthew Lee has been using his blog to present a distorted and one-sided view of his case and unfairly attacking UNCA and its elected Executive Committee members. We therefore feel compelled to communicate to UNCA members the Executive Committee’s view of the dispute.

One of the five members of the Board of Examination announced her resignation on June 11, at an UNCA Executive Committee meeting. She explained in tears that she felt offended and intimidated by the way Matthew Lee had described her in his blog. Another member of the Board of Examination requested that Matthew Lee guarantee that he would not use his website to attack him while the Board of Examination carries out its assigned task of considering harassment and bullying complaints made against Matthew Lee. Matthew Lee refused to grant that guarantee.

We believe that Matthew Lee has also used his blog to attack and attempt to intimidate the chairman of the Board of Examination.

We have decided to replace the Board member who resigned with UNCA member Tarek Fathi. We hope the Board of Examination can begin its work as soon as possible. The UNCA Executive Committee strongly urges Matthew Lee to pledge not to attack, threaten or intimidate in any way the members of the Examination Board.

The creation of the Board of Examination comes after months of attacks by Matthew Lee on his colleagues. The UNCA Executive Committee believes Matthew Lee has increasingly used his blog as a weapon to punish colleagues who have criticized him or who he feels crossed him in some way. He has published lies about colleagues that could damage their credibility and has recently started writing to UNCA members’ editors, complaining about them in a way that could damage their careers and/or advancement possibilities. He has leveled wild and false allegations against UNCA itself – primarily that it is attempting to censor him and remove his accreditation. UNCA has nothing to do with the accreditation process. It is handled by the U.N. secretariat. Matthew Lee has also sent individual UNCA Executive Committee members threatening emails, suggesting to them that he would retaliate if they supported the Executive Committee’s move to establish the Board of Examination. Matthew Lee has also suggested that UNCA is somehow responsible for threats against him and negative reports about him in the Sri Lankan press. The suggestion that UNCA was somehow behind those reports or in any way condones such threats against him is a false and damaging claim. The Sri Lankan news reports that UNCA is trying to evict him from the U.N. and that he could face jail time are false and did not come from UNCA. UNCA condemns in the strongest terms all threats against any journalist.

The Executive Committee also expresses its regret that Matthew Lee began publicizing the Committee’s internal dispute with him.

Last week Matthew Lee had expressed a willingness to apologize for using his blog to attack UNCA President Giampaolo Pioli. But the statement Matthew Lee produced was an attempt to justify his published attacks on his colleagues and was not an apology. It was rejected in a 14-1 vote (Matthew Lee was the only dissenting vote) by the Executive Committee, though Matthew Lee is encouraged to post a full and straightforward apology on his blog. The Executive Committee has also asked him to resign his position as an Executive Committee member-at-large while remaining a member of UNCA.

UNCA has always supported Matthew Lee’s reporting on the U.N. The UNCA Executive Committee and individual UNCA members, including those who have been subjected to attacks in his blog, have defended him against his critics at the U.N. UNCA has never attempted to censor him, nor does it have any desire or power to do so. Matthew Lee is, and always been, free to publish whatever he chooses on his website.

Matthew Lee is presenting himself as a victim. But the UNCA Executive Committee believes that Matthew Lee is the aggressor, using his website and a recent email campaign to bully and intimidate his colleagues, who are defenseless against him. His website has no editors and does not allow comments. No other journalist in UNCA can use his or her media to target colleagues and publish without accountability.

The UNCA Executive Committee had hoped to keep its dispute with Matthew Lee about his behavior private, but when he began publishing inaccurate reports about it on his blog and attacking his UNCA colleagues, he forced the Executive Committee to react. It was his decision to make the matter public, not the UNCA Executive Committee’s.

The principal target of his attacks recently has been UNCA President Giampaolo Pioli. Matthew Lee has accused Giampaolo Pioli of creating a “conflict of interest” by renting an apartment to the Sri Lankan Ambassador Palitha Kohona. Matthew Lee suggested that Giampaolo Pioli’s rental agreement with Palitha Kohona was the reason why Giampaolo Pioli arranged an UNCA screening of a Sri Lankan government film that was intended to be a rebuttal of a Channel 4 documentary called “The Killing Fields.” The Channel 4 film about the final phase of the war against the Tamil Tigers accused the Sri Lanka government of war crimes.

The UNCA Executive Committee would like to state the following for the record:

1) UNCA had planned to screen “The Killing Fields”. But the only time the producers offered UNCA coincided with the re-election of the Secretary-General, and they could not provide an alternate date. Instead the Executive Committee encouraged all UNCA members to attend a screening of the film across the street at the Church Center on June 21, 2011. Many UNCA members, including Matthew Lee, attended. Any suggestion that UNCA refused to screen “The Killing Fields” is false.

2) The later screening of the Sri Lanka government rebuttal film was scheduled like all other routine UNCA screenings in accordance with standard procedure. Matthew Lee was informed of the screening by email before it took place and never formally objected to the screening until after it took place. He verbally expressed his concerns about it to UNCA Vice President Louis Charbonneau, who responded that in his opinion there was no reason not to show the film. Except for Matthew Lee, all UNCA Executive Committee members supported the screening of the Sri Lanka government film.

3) Palitha Kohona became a tenant of Giampaolo Pioli when he was a U.N. official, long before he became Sri Lanka’s U.N. ambassador in September 2009 and long before Giampaolo Pioli was elected UNCA president in December 2008. His rental agreement with Palitha Kohona, which ended in January 2006, was never a secret and had been known among UNCA members, including Matthew Lee.

4) The UNCA Executive Committee sees no conflict of interest. If Matthew Lee believes there were financial exchanges between Giampaolo Pioli and Palitha Kohona after their well-known rental agreement ended, we ask him to produce evidence.

5) In September 2011, Matthew Lee apologized to Giampaolo Pioli at an Executive Committee meeting for his attacks on him in Inner City Press and promised not to repeat his attacks on him about the Sri Lanka issue. He did not keep that promise, and Giampaolo has taken the first steps to initiate a lawsuit against him.

What's Rajapaksa got to do with it? you LTTE supporting Tamil diaspora member. Your constant pro LTTE Tamil views are well documented on Guardian threads. Turn every article to an anti Sri Lankan rant. The Sri Lankan security forces successfully defeated Tamil terrorism by not going by the book. They did not 'advance to contact' alone and all that military jargon. They did not follow 'Queensbury Rules' as in Boxing, despite the fact that the LTTE used brutal and inhuman methods. But they defeated your military wing. The journalist in question, Mathew Lee, not only highlighted the SL governments actions, but the LTTE actions as well. No one else has defeated terrorism. Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc. and now the African countries. You LTTE supporting diaspora has still not got over the LTTE's annihilation and are trying to mount a challenge to the democratically elected government from without as your struggle within has failed. Most of you are trying to get on the 'bandwagon' to show your host nations that Sri Lanka is not a safe place for Tamils in order to achieve economic migrant status and stop deportations. Ask the Tamils living in Sri Lanka, which the west is doing through their missions You will not fool even the west so easily.

Thats right Stonk, and you turn every criticism of the murderous Rajapaksa regime (a UNSG appointed Independent Panel found that, more than 40 thousand Tamil civilians were slaughtered by the regime in the last months of the war in 2009) into an attack on the Tamil Diaspora. Your constant defense of the textbook authoritarian Rajapaksa regime and your threats against Tamils living in Sri Lanka are well documented on Guardian threads. You live comfortably in the west, using the protection of the laws and freedoms the western countries offer to defend a brutal, lawless and corrupt regime.

Mathew Lee is a courageous reporter who strives to tell the truth, for this he has been targeted by the Rajapaksa regime and others. To associate the Rajapaksa regime in the targeting of Lee is not a concoction of the Tamil Diaspora.

It's a fallacy to think that all UN reps are infallible and incorruptible. Good on ya Matthew. Keep those uncomfortable Qs coming. Let them kick out the spineless, charmless and clueless head, instead.

You again. LTTE sympathisers ganging up on Rajapaksa your 'Bette Noir'. He gave the crucial political leadership to defeat your military wing. The UNSG panel did not specify 40,000 civilian casualties as you do. They did specify that some unsubstantiated reports mentioned that amount. The Times in fact made a reference to that amount, without any knowledge or evidence on the ground. Why don't you go the whole hog and start spouting out 'genocide' as well. I have lived in the west, comfortably or not,(and can visit Sri Lanka as often as I like.) unlike you refugee LTTE sympathising economic migrants, who are raising a hue and cry about Sri Lanka not being safe for you in order to justify your continued stay in this country. 'Pongal' is over for you . The authorities are sending you lot back in droves. And stop repeating what I write, verbatim, if you don't have the capability to form sentences of your own. I never made any threats against the Tamils in Sri Lanka. It is your lack of comprehension and out of context thinking that leads you to make such comments. although if the threat applied to you lot, so be it.

The Times in fact made a reference to that amount, without any knowledge or evidence on the ground.

oh really?? And you have evidence of this 'fact' do you? care to provide that evidence? If you cannot, it is just an opinion and you know what they say about opinions and ....everyone's got one, so befitting for a hate-filled anti-Tamil like you. So keep defending the brutal Rajapaksa regime while they continue to murder Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims alike. Just like Gaddaffi and Saddam Hussein, the law will catch up with you lot one day.

Reference The Times newspaper (Paywall) under World news Asia. Their claim was mentioned in most broadsheet newspapers at the time. What evidence do you have that there were 40,000 civilian deaths?? What evidence do you have?? None whatsoever, I suspect, except for repeating what is on Tamilnet.
Read the Darusman report on the UN's website. Why do I bother giving you references,I ask myself.
You are a hate filled LTTE supporting Tamil diaspora'n who will get his just desserts, here or in your home country, and that will never be Eelam. Comparing President Rajapaksa to Sadam or Gaddaffi is like comparing chalk and cheese. Ask the International Community. Your GTF, BTF and all the Tamil fronts are doomed, in time to come.

Incidentally your colleague jellybaby1 has written on a CIF thread that the number killed was 100,000.
Oh you LTTE supporting Tamil diaspora, can't even keep count !! Make up your minds and then the International Community might, just might, take you seriously and investigate the SL governments actions
How many of your own people did the LTTE kill while trying to escape from their clutches?? If Menik Farm had 300,000 fleeing from the LTTE, why did they go to Government controlled areas?? You LTTE supporters have no answers to that. I remember going past parliament square, when you lot protested to stop the war before the LTTE leadership got killed, and seeing what an ugly mess you had made of the place. All you lot can do is protest, protest, protest, to no avail probably as the International Community know that the LTTE are guilty as hell.