Over 2,000 Chinese studying or working in Manchester and neighboring cities in central Britain held a silence demonstration against media distortion in front of the BBC office building on Saturday.
Yang Tiandu, one of the demonstration organizers, said that they have come to the BBC office to show their anger over its "unbalanced, unfair and distorted coverage of China and the Tibet issue."
"We are coming to urge the media here to stick to fairness and balance in their reporting on China, to urge people here to go to China to look with their own eyes, not to be misled by the media," Yang said.
"We are here for understanding and friendship, and we want the common people to hear our voice," he said.
Yang said that most of the protesters had registered online, and he was surprised to see so many Chinese, mainly students, showing up for the event.
In an open letter to the BBC, the protestors said that the BBC adopted "double-standards" and failed to provide credible and independent coverage.
"We strongly condemn the BBC for its adoption of double-standards reporting tactics, and violation of ethics for news coverage," the letter read, urging the BBC to change its current attitude in news reports about China.
The protestors said they demanded "fair and impartial reports and most importantly truth" from the media on their future coverage on China.
On the March 14 riots in Lhasa, capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, the BBC released a picture on its website showing Chinese armed police officers helping medical staff move an injured person into an ambulance.
The caption, however, was: "There is a heavy military presence in Lhasa," neglecting obvious "First Aid" and Red Cross signs on the ambulance.
Despite the looting, arson and killings committed by the rioters, the BBC made no mention of their atrocities, but insisted that the Chinese government launched a "military crackdown" and the Tibet riots ended up in "bloodshed," the protesters accused.
For the Olympic torch relay in London, the BBC "deliberately showed sparsely distributed Tibet separatists and their waving flags, despite a huge presence of pro-Chinese supporters," which the letter said, "severely violated the principle of the media: being objective and fair."
"These fabricated news stories were based on distortion of the facts, shifting from right to wrong, mixing lies with truth, taking quotes out of context, defaming and making wrongful accusations and inventing facts without basis," the letter said.
Yang said most Chinese working or studying in Britain are "angry" over what the BBC and some other local media have been doing these days.
Carrying banners like "BBC, stop lying" and "We want the truth, " the demonstrators stayed most of the time quiet for about one hour in front of the BBC building, and then marched to the Town Hall, waiving Chinese national flags and Olympic sign boards.
Overseas Chinese in London held a similar peaceful demonstration on Saturday. |
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