The military on Monday refuted contents of a story published by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on alleged human rights violations in Pakistan and termed it to be a “pack of lies and in violation of journalistic ethos”,
Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) Director General (DG) Major General Asif Ghafoor took to the social media website Twitter, where he shared screen grabs of the libelous article.
The tweet read, “News story published by BBC on 2nd June 2019, titled “Uncovering Pakistan’s Secret Human Rights Abuses” is pack of lies and in violation of journalistic ethos. The issue is being formally taken up with BBC authorities.”
The DG, in a statement, claimed that the BBC had disregarded the state’s narrative over the recent Waziristan incident.
He rubbished the news item and the claims it made, and said that they have reached out to the publishers against the piece. He revealed that the ISPR was given a dubious questionnaire before the article was published, and added that the military’s media wing had also offered complete assistance to the publisher so that facts could be determined.
“BBC published the story according to its own whims rather than accepting the offer of the foremost military information source of the country,” the DG said. “The opinions being stated as facts in the story are far from reality,” he said.
Talking about an alleged air attack on January 22, 2014, the DG said that it was more misreporting on the publisher’s part and that the attack never took place. Questioning the credibility of the story, he said that the publisher had failed to back up the claims with factual proofs and evidence.
“People’s life and safety were in extreme danger, mosques, schools, market places nothing was off limit in the area, people’s heads were being severed and being played football with by the extremists, people were held hostage and were at the mercy of militias,” the DG said regarding the situation in the area before the army operation.
