A protest took place outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London on Sunday, to denounce the BBC’s silence on the killing of Kurdish journalists Cîhan Bilgîn and Nazım Daştan by a Turkish drone strike in northeast Syria on 19 December. The protests, organised by the Kurdish People’s Assembly of Britain, were attended by British journalists and members of the Kurdish community in London.
“We are here today to ask the BBC why. When it comes to Kurds, [the] BBC is always silent. Today we are questioning this silence. We want to understand why [the] BBC is silent in the face of the massacre of two journalists,” said journalist Nejla Arî, speaking on behalf of the Kurdish Journalists’ Initiative.
Protest in London: Why the silence, BBC?
🔴A protest outside BBC Broadcasting House has demanded an explanation for the network’s silence on the killings of two Kurdish journalists in a Turkish drone strike in northeast Syria.#HandsOffKurds | #FreePress | #DefendRojava… pic.twitter.com/7w9YVWVFxN
— MedyaNews (@medyanews_) December 23, 2024
“Killing journalists while they are on the job is a war crime according to international treaties,” added another speaker. She stressed that Turkey had sought to eliminate the two Kurdish journalists, like many others before them, in an effort to prevent its crimes against the Kurdish people from being exposed. One of the murdered journalists, Daştan, had filmed Turkish and ISIS mercenaries exchanging greetings, during an operation to liberate Raqqa (Reqa) from ISIS in 2017-18.
The action outside Broadcasting House follows statements of condemnation by several international journalist associations over the killing of Bilgîn and Daştan. The protestors also called on the Syrian and Turkish legal apparatuses and relevant international bodies to carry out investigations into the attack in order to identify and hold to account those responsible for this war crime.
On Thursday, a wave of mobilisation swept across Europe and the Kurdish-inhabited regions of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, condemning the killing of the journalist and demanding justice.
