Sunday 12 August 2018

The BBC are covering up UK complicity in Saudi war crimes


This week Saudi Arabian forces blasted a bus full of children to pieces in Yemen leaving at least 29 dead and many more severely injured, which is just one of countless war crimes the Saudis have committed since they began bombarding the country in 2015.

Other Saudi war crimes include attacks on busy market places, wedding celebrations and fleeing refugees, the targeting of civilian infrastructure like electricity and water treatment plants, and the deliberate use of famine and disease as weapons through their ongoing blockade of food and basic medical supplies and attacks on distribution infrastructure.
 

The bus bombing was so appalling that a small amount of coverage actually leaked into the UK mainstream media, however everyone knows that if Bashar Assad's regime had blasted a bus full of Syrian children to pieces, then there would have been wall to wall outrage, with plenty of condemnation of Russia for supplying Syria with weapons and playing an active military role in supporting Assad's campaigns.

Interestingly none of the UK mainstream media coverage bothers to explain that not only is Saudi Arabia Britain's biggest customer for weapons, the UK is also supplying the Saudi forces with military assistance!

The omission of these crucial details from mainstream media coverage of Saudi war crimes is an example of the propaganda tactic of deception by omission.

Take the BBC's coverage of the Saudi bus-bombing that left at least 29 children dead. Towards the end of the article it does actually mention that starvation and cholera as now rife in Yemen, but without bothering to explain that the Saudi forces are actually using famine and disease as weapons against the Yemeni people.

The BBC article also makes no mention whatever of Britain's role in arming the Saudi war criminals, nor the British service personnel that are embedded with the Saudi forces.

Another thing the BBC fail to mention in their coverage is that the United Kingdom government have more than quadrupled the amount of arms being sold to Saudi Arabia since they began their attacks on Yemen.


Neither do the BBC bother to mention that the official Tory government excuse for Britain arming the Saudis is that if Britain doesn't profit from Saudi war crimes, then someone else might!

There's absolutely no way that balanced or impartial coverage of what the Saudis are doing in Yemen would seek to downplay their deliberate use of famine and disease as weapons, or omit the fact that the United Kingdom government is actively supporting the Saudi regime, despite knowing that the Saudis are using British weapons to commit war crimes.

But then after the staggering levels of BBC bias demonstrated through their ridiculously one-sided pro-austerity/anti-investment economics coverage, their extraordinary bias during the Scottish independence referendum, their recent assault on the free speech of Scottish independence advocates, and their shockingly pro-Tory/anti-Corbyn coverage from their politics team, it's hardly surprising that they're desperate to minimise and downplay Saudi war crimes, and omit the fact that the Tory government are complicit in them.


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