Thursday 16 June 2011

Impartial BBC?

'Rioters clashed with police in Athens earlier today...'. This is how the BBC News at 10 report started last night and it continued in that vein.

Nothing about the Indignant who have been assembling at Syntagma Square for the last 22 days, their numbers reaching 100,000 at times; nothing about the general strike that paralyzed the country; nothing about the 80,000 people who yesterday demonstrated peacefully in the streets of Athens. The only mention was of  'rioters',  thus giving a really skewed impression of what happened in Greece yesterday.


Protesters run away from tear gas canister and a burning barricade during clashes with riot police in Athens' central Syntagma (Constitution) Square, 15 June 2011

This is the picture from the BBC website this morning (with a reluctant mention of a general strike).


Greek anti-austerity protests in Athens

They could have shown this instead....



What really happened is very different and a summary was posted in this blog yesterday. This is an update:

The demonstrations in Athens yesterday were peaceful until a small group of  'hoodies' started attacking the police and violent clashes ensued. By late afternoon things had calmed down. By early evening, despite the oppressive atmosphere created by the tear gas which was still lingering in the air, thousands of people re-assembled at Syntagma Square to continue with the peaceful protest that has been the norm in the last 22 days  - standing and confronting the Parliament opposite.


They are indignant about the impoverishment and pauperising of the majority of Greek people and the loss of sovereignty that has put the country at the mercy of the banks. The demand is still the same: that the corrupt ruling elites who have brought the country to the brink of collapse, should go.





And finally, a picture of the Acropolis (nowhere near where the clashes occured) in a fog of teargas.







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