Will you QUIT - Ban Ki-moon?

The BBC marks ninety years of broadcasting amidst large questions about its credibility and trustworthiness. In its efforts to regain the credibility is so badly needs today, it has once again begun to use Sri Lanka, through a leaked and now confirmed UN report that has pointed out the major shortcomings of its own staff, in the final stages of Sri Lanka's battle to defeat the terrorism of the LTTE.

The BBC is using the admitted shortcomings and failure of the UN staff in Sri Lanka at a crucial time, to build a smoke screen around its shameful record on the worst example of harm caused to children through the cover up, if that be so, or even the encouragement of paedophilia.

The Jimmy Saville affair, of one of the top BBC presenters and personalities, who was both respected and loved by BBC audiences, with children's programmes that made parents trust him in dealing with their kids, as well as his work in child health institutions and enormous fund raising for charitable causes, especially for children, during a long career at BBC, has now led to more than 200 Police inquiries into allegations of paedophilia by Sir Jimmy Saville, who was knighted both by the Queen of England and the Pope in Rome.

The issues that are being raised is whether much of his paedophilia took place within the BBC premises, and how many of his colleagues were witness to his contemptible activities, or even aided and abetted him in these, and how the management of BBC had not known about this all these years, until allegations emerged after Saville's death last October. This is a major slur on an organization that is run mainly from the license fees paid by TV license holders in the UK.

The House of Commons is probing the BBC's handling of the charges against Jimmy Saville, and the London Metropolitan Police is also conducting its own probes with two arrests already made, and many more likely. The BBC too has its own probes under way, and one major aspect of the probes by the House of Commons and the BBC is how and what led to a special edition of what is considered the BBC's flagship programme 'Newsnight' produced some months ago that probed some of the activities of Jimmy Saville was suddenly shelved, and some eulogies to him were broadcast instead.

The crisis has grown so big, especially about the BBC's and the flagship Newsnight's own credibility, leading to the recent resignation of BBC Director General George Entwistle, amid tough questions over the network's handling of an escalating child sex abuse scandal.

BBC's credibility

Two more prominent members of the BBC's news team have also stepped aside in the wake of the inquiries being made, and there are also calls for the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Chris Patten, who is also the Chancellor of Oxford University, to also resign his position on the BBC Trust, for he lack of oversight into the running of this major international broadcasting institution, and also for the huge payout of 1.3 million Pounds made to the departing Director.

These issues will no doubt be resolved by the BBC, the House of Commons and the Police and other interested and affected parties in the course of time. But it is interesting for us because it raises other important issues of the BBC's credibility.

To give just one glaring and instant example, the resignation of the Director General Entwhistle did not take place over the Jimmy Saville Scandal on paedophilia in the BBC. It was because a more recent Newsnight programme that referred to Saville and paedophilia, had mistakenly alluded, without mentioning his name, to a leading Tory Party politician, as being involved in paedophilia. The person who made the unnamed allegations that apparently referred to, Tory peer Lord McAlpine, had since apologized for mistaking the person. And the BBC did carry an apology on the same programme later. But, that slur on one Tory politician, once close to Margaret Thatcher, was what led to the major shakeup in the BBC. While it is so much bothered about harming the image and reputation of one politician, which is certainly wrong and cannot be condoned, the BBC has in no way made any apology nor has anyone even come close to stepping aside when it makes huge unsubstantiated allegations against a county such as Sri Lanka, on issues of human rights and allegations of War Crimes and violations of Humanitarian Law, that harms not just one person however important, but the image of our political and military leaders, and the entire country.

These are sweeping and collective allegations that do not move Trust Chair Chris Patten to call for a shake up the BBC's entire news and operational structure.

The BBC was very happy to present the unsubstantiated and unverified video footage by Channel 4 making charges against Sri Lanka, to coincide with the UNHCR sittings in Geneva, earlier this year, that was discussing this country and its defeat of the world's most ruthless terrorist organization, but has had no breast beating or mea culpa for all the harm it gladly did to Sri Lanka. It was harm done to serve the interests of those who kept tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils as human shields (verified and proven) for many months, recruited child soldiers by the hundreds to carry arms for terror and also turned Tamil women into the most lethal suicide killers, to further cause of terror and separation, and whose supporters and activists still act openly in all parts of the UK and Europe to promote the same cause, without the least regrets for such support for the savagery of the LTTE. The BBC must have known that the LTTE, for which these groups are fronting, was banned in the UK as an international terrorist organization.

UN Cover

The BBC is the only international news service that is giving the widest coverage to the UN report that has fault found with its own staff in Sri Lanka, for allegedly abandoning their duties and posts by remaining in Colombo and the South of Si Lanka during the crucial final period of the battle to defeat the LTTE.

There are definitely unsubstantiated allegations made about the Sri Lanka authorities 'intimidating' UN staff into leaving the battle affected areas of the North, and allegedly of refusing visas to UN personnel. The charges have been effectively contradicted by Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, who is President Rajapaksa's Special Envoy on Human Rights to the UNHCR.

But the BBC uses the findings of the UN investigation into the activities of its own staff in Sri Lanka, to attack this country using video footage that is not part of this latest UN Report on its own weaknesses and failures, but rather footage from earlier anti-Sri Lankan programmes aired on its services and elsewhere.

This latest UN Internal Review is a sad admission of its own failure. There are persons such as Gordon Weiss, a journalist and key UN officer in Sri Lanka at the time, who has since written a scathing book full of unverified and grisly charges about Sri Lanka, who did not raise any questions about government intimidation at the time referred to, when he would have been able to raise such issues. The BBC quotes Benjamin Dix, who was part of the UN team that left the North of Sri Lanka at the time on a UN office decision, who now says he disagreed with the pull-out.

"I believe we should have gone further North, not evacuate South and basically abandon the civilian population with no protection or witness," Mr. Dix said. "As a humanitarian worker, questions were running through my mind: 'what is this all about? Isn't this what we signed up to do?'" So why the hell did he not raise such issues with the UN Representative in Colombo, and even with Ban-Ki-moon and others when he could have done so, and not wait for a Jimmy Saville and child abuse trapped BBC to ask him about it?

The UN Internal review that is useful to improve its own methods of operations in areas of importance should be used for what it is and not as a new whip against Sri Lanka. The fact is that with the release of the review there are even less independent sources that can substantiate all the charges that are being made against Sri Lanka, since the LTTE was defeated. The UN has given official figures of the numbers killed, that do not match the "unverified figures bandied about by the BBC and Channel 4, using the Darusman report that is itself very much questionable in its methodology of investigation, (if it ever did any joint or independent probing into what happened in Sri Lanka.

UN problem

What is relevant in this instance is to know what the UN, through Ban-Ki-moon, its Secretary General states on this matter, and the conclusions that arise from these.

The UN states that the internal review concluded that various UN agencies, including the Security Council and Human Rights Council, had failed at every level to meet their responsibilities in the last months of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

In particular it highlighted the organization's reluctance to publish casualty figures and its decision to withdraw staff from the war zone, as well as its failure to report evidence of widespread government shelling. (Surprisingly no reference to widespread LTTE shelling stated in earlier report to Ban Ki-moon).

As a result, the report recommends a comprehensive review of the UN's implementation of humanitarian and protection mandates.

"I am determined that the United Nations draws the appropriate lessons and does its utmost to earn the confidence of the world's people, especially those caught in conflict who look to the organization for help," Mr. Ban said in a statement.

The report had been made public, Mr. Ban said, as "transparency and accountability are critical to the legitimacy and credibility of the United Nations".

The UN's former humanitarian chief, John Holmes, has criticized the report, who had much closer knowledge of events than those who ran to Colombo to ensure their careers in the UN, said the UN faced "some very difficult dilemmas" at the time and could be criticized for the decisions it had taken.

It would interesting to know what positions the key UN officers who were in Colombo and elsewhere in Sri Lanka at the time hold now in the world body. Have they gone up the ladder in the UN bureaucracy and how far? If so is it not as reward for the work they did here?

If one takes an example of the BBC in this entire sordid matter of covering up of Jimmy Saville, it is for Ban Ki-moon to do the decent thing and resign. Take the cue from BBC's Director General George Entwistle, because what the internal review shows is the total failure on his part to as UN CEO to manage and properly guide his staff.

There is no point in trying to heap blame on the Security Council or any other body of the UN. Ban Ki-moon was in regular contact with the UN office in Colombo at the time, and it was he who should have instilled the importance of transparency and accountability among its own staff, if there was a problem, instead of now calling for further investigations into Sri Lanka, and give the BBC a screen to hide from the shame brought upon itself from the Jimmy Saville affair.