Today 7 may 2011 BBC is reporting about some demonstrations in Syria, an inhabitant of Baniyas had called Syrian News to protest: there is no protest, no army, no arrests, please ask the international media to stop the lies against our country he pleaded with us .
Syrian people protest against international broadcaster campaign of lies and manipulation.
The campaign of media instigation and fact distortion undertaken by several satellite channels continues, with these channels broadcasting reports and footage and using all available methods and techniques to fabricate false stories and reports, in addition to using so-called eyewitnesses to distort facts regarding what is happening in Syria and mislead public opinion in Syria and abroad.
Al-Jazeera broadcast a video of around 50 people walking in street without showing their faces, saying that they were protesting in al-Midan, Damascus, adding sounds of thousands and looping the footage several times to give the illusion of great numbers. They also resorted to calling people coming out of mosques protestors.
The channel also tried to pass off a protest in Yemen as a protest in al-Qamishli, despite the obvious presence of the Yemeni flag.
Al-Jazeera went on to show a gathering of around 200 people with the title “thousands of Syrians protest today” in addition to using a static image of what it purported to be a protest in Banyas, despite the image being the same one used last week, only to backtrack and show another image supposedly from this week.
The channel then showed footage of a protest in Idleb from three weeks ago and said that it took place on May 6th, apparently forgetting that this scene was displayed before or maybe just ignoring the fact and counting on the viewers’ short memory span or lack of attention to details.
Meanwhile the people of Idleb denied al-Jazeera’s claims of a protest in front of the Governorate building, denouncing the news broadcast by al-Jazeera and their use of lies to cause chaos and undermine Syria’s security and safety.
In a statement to SANA, Director of Awqaf (Endowments) in Idleb Mazen Lababidi said that the news ran by al-Jazeera is completely false and that the shown footage was of a number of youths after leaving al-Rawda Mosque near the Governorate on April 22nd, adding that people went to Friday prayers on May 6th and returned to their normal lives afterwards in a calm atmosphere.
The channel also showed images of “tens of thousands of protestors” allegedly taking place in the town of Nimr in Daraa… a town of less than 5,000 inhabitants. The images were used last week on the same channel.
In the ongoing saga of “eyewitnesses,” Mohammad Abazeid phoned the channel from Daraa and claimed that a large number of specific security bodies entered the city, detailing the personnel and the bodies, leaving one to wonder how he found out all this information while he claimed that he wasn’t allowed to leave his house.
As for Anas al-Shouri, an alleged eyewitness from Banyas who was promoted by the channel to the rank of the protest’s organizer, he said that there are more than ten thousand persons in the protest. The channel itself showed images of less than one thousand people allegedly in the protest that took place in Banyas.
The channel aired footage of people it claimed are protesters in Tel Kalakh area. The channel dubbed inconsistent voices with the aim of changing the slogans chanted in the gathering, while the news broadcaster repeated the slogans he claimed were chanted in that gathering.
Meanwhile, the al-Jazeera’s reporter in the Jordanian city of al-Ramtha talked as if he is indeed in Daraa despite his own claims that Daraa is blockaded and that communications are cut off.
When Dr. Bassam Abu Abdullah from Damascus spoke with the channel and started refuting the al-Jazeera claims, the two broadcasters tried repeatedly to move to other topics in an attempt to keep the channel’s role in the incitement hidden.
Najati Tayyara, who was promoted by the channel from a human rights activist to a researcher, narrated a science-fiction story about him hearing protests and hunfire noises in five separate places in Homs at the same time.
In al-Qamishli, Spokesman of the Kurdish Parties Gathering Mohammad Ismael disappointed France 24 channel when he told it that the slogans chanted by protesters in al-Qamishli are all patriotic, peaceful and democratic, adding that these slogans express true demands for reforms.
Ismael told the channel, despite the broadcaster’s attempts to manipulate his statements, that there were no arrests at all.
In the same context of fabrication, the BBC channel aired during the sunny afternoon of May 6th a number of photos of a nightly candle procession in an unknown location under the title “Protests in Syria Today.”
EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY 