Could we trust the BBC?

When the LTTE bombed the Central Bank in Colombo on January 31, 1996, a big-mouthed BBC white female newscaster (name not known) referred to Sri Lanka having over 500,000 deaths in the ongoing conflict. This number was  quietly adjusted to 50,000 in later broadcasts without admitting to or apologizing for the  devastatingly false and misleading earlier figure. This is in keeping with the BBC’s Any News First Culture.

About ten years ago, one of the BBC’s drunken reporters sat on the lap of a Buddha statue at Kataragama. He  continues to serve the BBC. Had he tried his profane larks in the Middle East, he may have lost two of his prized possessions. He didn’t even get kicked on his buttocks here, so his camp followers carry on regardless.

When our Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was shot dead by a LTTE terrorist despite the CFA, the BBC  was able to ferret out one Jayaweera living in self- exile in London around midnight, a disgruntled former Sri Lankan civil servant and member of some evangelical organisation. Jayaweera said it that it was definitely not the work of the LTTE and that he suspected it was some chauvinist Sinhala anti Tamil group working with the Government.

Trust the BBC rat-catching ability.This interview was not aired thereafter. When a pregnant woman terrorist suicide bomber attempted to kill the Sri Lankan Army Commander on April 25, 06 and killed 11 others and wounded over 20, the BBC  had to be consistent with their thoroughly false and biased reporting. It reported that "tens of thousands" were fleeing the village of Sampur after the SLAF attacked the  LTTE office there.

To seal its sensational reporting, the BBC crowned it with the story that a total of "40,000 refugees" had fled the area. Sampur has a total population of 16,000. Most Sri Lankan towns are even smaller than that. If the BBC had any common sense, it would have checked its story first. BBC didn’t do so as it would not have made a good and ‘saleable’ story for either the BBC or its blood-sucking idol, the LTTE.

BBC’s Stephen Saccur tried strenuously to trap the  present white South African President of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in an interview in the first week of May. Saccur failed miserably in his attempt to force the South African to accept that Nelson Mandela headed a terrorist organization as defined by the BBC.

The South African, who apparently had been one of Mandela’s defence lawyers  at the treason charges  during the apartheid regime, resented and firmly rejected Saccur’s accusation. He said Mandela consistently rejected the use of violence.  Saccur should read Mandela’s autobiography ‘The Long Walk to Freedom’ pages 203, 204-205, 218, 220,221, 222, 225,, 235,-236, 239-239, 318 to enlighten himself. Saccur then insisted that acts of violence were committed under Mandela’s authority. The South African pointed out that  some acts of violence were committed after Mandela went to prison, but they did not have either his sanction or that of the ANC and never did.

That is the essential difference between the South African struggle and the one in Sri Lanka, and why the South African one was resolved bringing its people together without the bloodshed that was predicted, which stunned the world. The striking similarity is that the blacks and coloreds in South Africa and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka are the overwhelming majority, which the minority whites then, and the LTTE for the past 25 years have tried their best respectively to dominate. Saccur had diverted from the theme of the interview to make a sweeping, false and cruel  allegation and failed deservedly. He was exposed as a cunning distorter of news and facts, attempting to destroy the revered icon of billions of people in Africa and Asia. This should be another think for the BBC.

It was Winston Churchill who said " appeasers are those who hope that they will be the last to be thrown to the crocodiles". Let’s see what al Qaeda will eventually do to the BBC.

Why does the Government tolerate the BBC’s presence here? Is it because the BBC is allowed, obviously for a fee, to infiltrate SLBC to further its reputation in Sri Lanka as a propaganda arm of the LTTE and purveyor of biased and completely untruthful news, especially on Sri Lanka and the Third World? It is a thinly camouflaged mouthpiece of the LTTE. It is sly and cunning as a fox.

The question is should we tolerate the BBC here.

-IOL

Ranil wants paramilitary groups disarmed – TamilNet

Opposition and former Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is completing a short fellowship at MIT’s Center for International Studies (CIS) this week, addressed expatriate Tamils at the Boston Tamil Center on Friday at 6.30 pm, pro-LTTE TamilNet reported in a news story posted on its website on Friday (13)

Wickremesinghe spoke on the tenuous nature of the current peace process and said that only concerted action by co-chairs or India will be able to able to arrest the collapse of the peace process.

He said that the issue of paramilitiaries is one of the major causes for the deterioration of the ceasefire, and added that paramilitaries should be disarmed.

He talked about the peace process and the dialogue with the LTTE during his premiership, and also about the economic prospects for Sri Lanka. He said Sri Lanka unless conflict is brought under control Sri Lanka will not be able to utlize the economic opportunities that are currently available. These opportunities do not last forever, he said.

Mr Wickrmensinghe joined MIT’s Center for International Studies (CIS) on a short-term fellowship for discussions on the politics of the Indian Ocean region and conflict resolution in general.

"It is an exceptional opportunity for the MIT community to have Ranil here. He provides us with experience and insights. We hope and trust he will benefit from his visit as much as we are," said John Tirman, CIS director.

Mr Wickremesinghe also gave a seminar on "Beyond a militarized approach to terrorism: Experience from Sri Lanka," an event opened to public on Monday, May 8, 2006.-Island