BBC still misrepresenting Hizballah terror designation

An article titled “Thailand court jails man over bomb-making materials” appeared on the Asia and Middle East pages of the BBC News website on September 18th.

Thailand Hizb

In that article we once again see the BBC inaccurately representing the subject of Hizballah’s designation as a terrorist organization.

“Thai authorities had accused him to having links to Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shia Islamist movement backed mainly by Syria and Iran that the US considers to be a terrorist organisation, but Hussein denied any militant links throughout the trial.”

A similarly anodyne description of Hizballah is presented in all of the three related articles appearing in the “More on this Story” section at the bottom of the report, with the March 21st article stating:

“Thai police have said that he has links to Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shia Islamist movement backed mainly by Syria and Iran that the US considers to be a terrorist organisation.”

The January 16th report states:

“Police say the man has links to Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shia Islamist movement backed by Syria and Iran that the US considers to be a terrorist organisation.”

And the January 13th report says:

“Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist movement which holds several seats in Lebanon’s parliament as well as being the country’s most powerful military force. Its defining platform is hostility towards Israel.

The movement is backed mainly by Syria and Iran and is considered by the US to be a terrorist organisation.”

In other words, in all four of these articles readers are given the very misleading impression that only the United States regards Hizballah as a terrorist organization whereas actually it is also proscribed in its entirety by the governments of Canada, Israel, France and the Netherlands, as well as the Gulf Cooperation Council and Bahrain. Australia, the United Kingdom and the European Union proscribe what they define as Hizballah’s “military wing”, although such a distinction is of course at odds with the facts. 

At the bottom of the January 13th article, readers will find a link to the BBC’s old and outdated profile of Hizballah dating from July 2010. As previously noted here, the BBC News website produced a new and improved profile of the terrorist organization in July 2013, but for some reason it consistently neglects to add a link that profile to articles relating to Hizballah.

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