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Insight By Sunil Kumar for LankaWeb

August 30th 2008

The BBC once again seems to merit the label Biased Broadcasting Corporation better known as the British Broadcasting Corporation and has done it again by getting involved in this contentious news report unmistakably pro LTTE sounding that Tamil tiger rebels in Sri Lanka have accused the Army of killing five civilians, including two children, in the so called rebel-controlled north.Which definition has little credibility as there is no such area beyong a hideout of rebel bunkers!

Yeah Yeah Yeah! so what else is new? and who are the Brit Broadcasters to be so bold as to make public a story which is not only steeped in doubt and speculation and why does the Sri Lankan Government not take Roland Buerk the BBC reporter who presented this story to task and ask him how he managed to get such a graphic tale of woe without even being a 100 kilometres of where the purported incident took place!

It seems almost as though the BBC was echoing the tiger lament that they needed rescuing from the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and have turned to one of their much speculated chief sympathisers the BBC who time and time again have virtually confirmed this title.

To be aware that the BBC even carried a tear jerking obituary to dead terrorist SP Thamilselvam while they tried their utmost to incarcerate Col Karuna without success are rank testimonies to where their sympathies are and should govern themselves in accordance with their responsibilities relative to unbiased broadcasting or face further exposure about their duplicities and take the rap for it where a better option might be to maintain that famous stiff British upperlip on matters they are not sure about!

It isn't really Kosher to broadcast news on the basis that "the rebels said artillery shells fired by the military fell inside a camp for internally displaced people near the northern town of Kilinochchi."

It constitutes mere hearsay and a likely distortion of the truth which is the hallmark of the LTTE. Furthermore there is nothing deliberate if a stray artillery shell has landed amid temporary shelters set up by the Government for people displaced by the fighting in the north, and has to be deemed accidental if this be the case but when the Sri Lankan military media has emphatically denied the rebels' accusation there is every likelihood that theirs is the true version and terrorist insinuations are the furthest from the truth!

Ironically the BBC has had no similar comments condemning the cowards of the LTTE who On Saturday Aug. 30th 2008 planted a bomb in Colombo which wounded at least 43 people. Very rationally and based on careful investigation the Government has accused the LTTE of the blast which was set off at a time when a large offensive against the rebels in Northern Sri Lanka was continuing with the terrorists taking heavy casualties. Unfortunately the civilian population in these areas, some who are supportive of the terrorists and others forced into being human shields for them have been caught up in the conflict.The Government and the Army have synonymously issued warnings and advisories to the civilians to clear the areas of conflict and the end result becomes very apparent that some of them have either not heeded the warnings or have remained at their own risk and the consequenses perhaps deadly albeit in the face of an ongoing conflict which has taken a huge toll!

If the Tamil Tiger terrorists with no tangible proof suggest that the Armed Forces were responsible for shelling the civilians it is more than likely that it was a deliberate attack by the terrorists themselves to make it appear like an Armed Forces doing! Something which needs no embellishment towards establishing credibilities given their track record.This is what the BBC needs to come to terms with!

In a statement which surely attests to all this the rebel group has said that five people had been killed, among them two small children the bodies of whom could be seen in pictures subsequently released. and regardless of the credibilities the BBC have been quick to lap it all up based on gullibility, myopia or both!

A spokesman for the military, Brig Udaya Nanayakkara, has said that the allegation was false, and that the military operation in the north had targeted only the Tigers' defences and not civilians. The Sri Lankan Air Force has begun dropping leaflets urging civilians to cross into government-controlled areas where there appears to have been some confusion where the civilians have retreated deeper into rebel areas rather than away from it as anticipated.

More than half of them have abandoned their homes in the last three months, fleeing further into rebel territory ahead of a military advance to crush the Tigers, and end their fight for a separate state for the Tamil minority and have been caught up in a deadly crossfire often which is at times beyond the control of the military and advantageous to the terrorists who use the ones who enter their territory as human shields or cannon fodder in a figurative sense!

The terrorists have blamed Sri Lankan Military for the shelling which they said had happened not far from Kilinochchi, the Tigers' administrative headquarters and the most important aspect of the urgent terrorist portrayal of the Sri Lankan Government as villains is relative to the stark reality that it is their survival which seems to come first at any cost even through lies and innuendo which the BBC has somewhat sickeningly overlooked and quite forgotten that the hub of terrorist activity is indeed centred in Kilinochchi!

If the BBC wants to be supportive of the blatant concoctions of the LTTE then they are also suggesting that the Sri Lankan Government is misrepresenting facts over the issue and has to be publicised to the world as the manner in which pro LTTE sources typically go about their business in attempting to discredit the Government of Sri lanka and her Armed Forces where BBC seems no exception as a tapable source towards their cause and reason enough to perhaps refurbish their methods of accurate broadcasting which oftentimes in the case of Sri Lanka is quite misleading and or laced in bias!

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