Category Archives: Human Rights abuses

Twisted BBC Priorities: Cuba Edition

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In the month of January, there were 268 arbitrary arrests and detentions of peaceful opponents of the Castro Regime in Cuba.

At least 268 arbitrary haltings of pacific opponents happened during the past month of January, revealed a report disclosed in Havana by the Cuban Commission of Human rights and Reconciliación Nacional (CCDHRN).

All the prisoners were released after some hours or of several days, but four of them were committed in prisons of high security, delaying their judicial hearing; another four have faced the same situation from December of 2010.
(translation mine)

But wait – there’s more:

The report emphasizes that the CDHRN was able to document in January at least 62 incidents that constituted abuses of human rights on the part of repressive agents of the government.

The document also emphasizes that “the political repression was particularly intense in the city of Santa Clara where at least 61 arrests happened, from only the 26 to the 28 of January, some of them with plenty of violence on the part of the police agents”.

The BBC simply isn’t interested. So what do they see fit to report?

Cuba welcomes new internet cable link with Venezuela

Cuba has welcomed the arrival of an undersea fibre-optic cable linking it to Venezuela as a blow to the US economic embargo.

The cable will transform communications in Cuba, which has among the slowest internet speeds in the world.

Apparently it’s all funded by the BBC’s darling, Hugo Chavez. Celebrate!

Human rights? Who cares about a few cracked skulls and detentions when a few well-connected (sorry) Cuban elites will be able to make cheaper international phone calls? Don’t be such a bore, eh?

Awesome priorities, BBC.

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Stability Monkeys

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The BBC is a firmly ideological organisation. One way you can see that is that the messages they purvey rarely change, even though they may evolve somewhat.

Take the Iranian election this week. The BBC’s John Simpson said when Ahmedinejad was elected in 2005 that Iranian politics was “complex and sophisticated”. The invitation to consider his election as an expression of an intelligent electoral system was clear.

Now, following the latest election in which Mahmood strengthened his position with suspicious symbolic perfection outlined by Amir Taheri here, Simpson describes Iran as “a relatively sophisticated country”. Relative to what he does not say. As I did before, in 2005, I invite you to discover some examples of this “sophistication”, all of which documented by Amnesty International (for which I hold no uncritical admiration) since Mr Simpson voiced his view of Iranian “sophistication” in 2005.

Simpson, now apparently ensconced in Iran as he used to ensconce himself in Iraq when he befriended Saddam’s ministers, makes the case for stability:


“it certainly is not in the outside world’s interest to have a long period of disorder in Iran. Political chaos in a leading oil-producing country would do more economic damage to Western countries.”

In so doing he makes the case for Ahmadinejad’s continuing in office, and breaches the code for impartiality. But that is more or less a stable state with the BBC, isn’t it?

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THE WRATH OF KHAN.

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Amnesty International is one of those organised hypocrisies to which the BBC swears fealty and so when Secretary General Irene “Gulag of our times”Khan decides to grace the State Broadcaster with an interview, you know that she is going to get an easy time. And so it was this morning, with her 7.25am interview on Today. Ostensibly there to chastise “the world” for its failure to meet the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the conversation naturally turned to that great abuser of Human Rights – the United States and provided the fragrant Irene with an opportunity to once more call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. To add emphasis, the BBC illustrate these global human rights abuses on its news page with a picture of..Zimbabwe? NO. China? No? Iran? No? Guantanamo? YES. Come to think of it, seeing as how UN peacekeepers are quite keen to gang-rape kids in foreign lands, wonder why the BBC didn’t ask Irene how she felt about the UN not meeting the UN’s Human Rights obligations? Must have slipped their mind, I guess….

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