Sri Lankan Oppression
Paul | 20.01.2013 19:48 | Repression
Paul
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Paul | 20.01.2013 19:48 | Repression
Paul
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Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
rephrase it
20.01.2013 22:36
tamo
BBC part of the problem, not solution in this case
21.01.2013 13:41
How the BBC could have so spectacularly failed to have covered this in hardly any in-depth current affair analysis documentary report (bar one - Newsnight on 13 Nov 2012) across it's television output in the intervening 3 1/2 years since the end of the conflict is beyond belief.
It indicates they must be part of the problem, not the solution
Even in the BBC News 24 report Tuesday night (13th Nov 2012) and the early hours of Wednesday 14th November, which appeared to be an extended version of Newsnight’s report by Lyse Doucet broadcast earlier on Tuesday night (13th Nov 2012), Lyse Doucet failed to mention how key passages of text in the copy of the UN internal report received by the BBC were redacted, and in an interview presumably conducted by Lyse Doucet of Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN - Palitha Kohona – there was no follow up question in that interview in response to the remarks made by Kohona where he said that it is "'absolute nonsense' to say a 'small country' could intimidate the UN and that his country had worked with senior UN officials", with the line of follow-on question focused on how the Sri Lanka government persuaded Ban-Ki-Moon and others to accept one of the Generals responsible for the carnage, Shavendra Silva, as a "Senior Adviser on Peacekeeping Operations" to the UN.
Also, the BBC considered that the instance of the state visit of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's to the UK to attend the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations as a member of the Commonwealth, which drew substantial protests from Tamil people at the start of June, was not an opportune news event to report on the issue and draw out the wider issues, as well as being a news event worthy of coverage in its own right on the basis that the controversial nature of events in the background in which the Sri Lankan' President is directly involved made his visit to the UK and direct contact with the Queen especially controversial. With the Queen's assumed reputation as the world's ambassador of moral virtue, this is especially apparant in light of the overwhelming moral weight of the war crime issue in Sri Lanka and the fact that in March, a resolution against Sri-Lanka was approved in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) at its 19th session in Geneva, noting that Sri Lanka has failed to implement the reconciliation measures recommended by the country's own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), calling for Sri Lanka to take more concrete actions towards reconciliation and especially, addressing the accountability issue and implementing the recommendations put forward by the LLRC.
Bullshit-Detector
Go west!
22.01.2013 01:05
The BBC is the state broadcaster for the United Kingdom. It does and says whatever the government decides it will do and say. The reporters are just there to lend a bit of credibility to it. In 2009 while the Tamils were being massacred, the BBC reported that it was just an anti-terror operation that Rajapaksa was conducting. They did this because that was the British governments position at the time.
Then it all went wrong and the BBC hurriedly cobbled together a bit of sham anger to help the government shuffle away from yet another foreign policy disaster. Since then, the government and the BBC have been quietly hoping it will just go away. Thats the way it is at the BBC and Whitehall.
You can see that in the reporting of the Algerian hostage crisis which Downing Street just walked right into. It all went pear shaped and the BBC and most other UK media simply didn't report what had happened. I think with the UK government being almost wholly drawn from the business and public relations sectors, there is simply no competence. When it all goes wrong, they simply obfuscate and procrastinate in the forlorn hope that if they can avoid it becoming a media storm, then they will be able to cobble together some reponse which if it goes well, they can then advertise at the top of their voices in the media to make them look good again. At the moment, that means cobbling some operation together in which a few hundred anti-business protesters and dissidents will be slaughtered so they can be spun in the British media as terrorists.
If we had a government that isn't Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem then we might have a more coherent opportunity to redress some of the problems we are all now facing. But the Conservatives will never do anything that contradicts what previous Conservative governments have done, Labour are the same.
In the UK, justice for the Tamils will not happen because local UK politics will not allow it. This is the reason why the UK should not be permitted to have a seat on the UN Security Council. We are simply not competent to maintain it. If you want justice for the Sri Lankan attempt at Genocide of the Tamils, then you must build a campaign to have the UK relieved of its seat on the UN Security Council.
As I understand it, the UN is now open to ideas of this nature.
anonymous
response to anonymous on media reporting of Algerian hostage crisis
22.01.2013 08:51
- The remark is correct, but for different reasons than how you account for the shortfall in media response in not being up front with specifics about the operation. Absolutely a political decision because British lives have been lost, all to protect future diplomatic ties with Algeria to not criticise them too much (see even all the criticism of the Algerian State response in dealing with the hostage crisis has been more-or-less quietly airbrushed out of the post-hostage crisis analysis). I disagree that Downing Street "walked straight into it". It was an event beyond anyone's control, and Downing Street/FCO did publicly criticise the Algerian government's response to the hostage crisis when it happened. What is curious is, as I say, how they have been quiet about that now ever since.
bs