LONDON
Scores of demonstrators have protested in front of the London headquarters of the British state broadcaster the BBC over its lack of coverage of the murders of three young Muslims in the U.S. state of North Carolina.
The protest came late on Thursday after the three were shot dead in a residential complex in Chapel Hill on Tuesday evening.
Protest organizer Sabby Dhalu criticized the BBC for its coverage, saying: "Muslims are being pictured always as assailants and not as the victims of terror."
The crowd chanted: "Stop showing all Muslims as terrorist" and "No Islamophobia".
- 'Murders were hate crimes'
An official from London-based group Unite Against Fascism, members of which also attended the protest, said: "We have to be in solidarity with Muslim society."
Dhalu said the crime should be considered a hate-crime.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, has been charged with three counts of murder over the killings, which happened close to the University of North Carolina campus.
Dhalu said mainstream media in the west had widely covered the attacks on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery in Paris in January in which 17 people died, pointing out: "Muslim lives are also important."
The BBC came under fierce criticism last year over its coverage of Israel's onslaught on Gaza under "Operation Protective Edge" last July.
- Open letter on Gaza coverage
Protests were held in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow with demonstrators accusing the UK state broadcaster of being biased in favor of Israel in its coverage of the conflict.
An open letter to the management of the BBC was signed by 45,000 people including veteran journalist John Pilger, civil rights campaigner and intellectual Noam Chomsky and documentary maker and social commentator Ken Loach "reminding" the BBC that "Gaza is under Israeli occupation and siege and Israel is bombing a refugee population".
The BBC defended its coverage as "balanced and impartial".
Israel pounded the Gaza Strip for almost a month from July 7, killing at least 1,904 Palestinians and injuring 9,817 others.
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