Category Archives: Bahrain

Two weeks in Bahrain’s military courts

Al Jazeera reports: Teachers, professors, politicians, doctors, athletes, students and others have all appeared in Bahrain’s military courts. In just two weeks, 208 people were sentenced or lost appeals, leading to a cumulative total of just less than 2,500 years in prison.

Many of those imprisoned took part in massive pro-democracy protests earlier this year. Others, families say, were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were targeted by virtue of their religious sect.

One lawyer, who represents dozens of the convicted and who asked not to be named, told Al Jazeera the total number of how many have stood in front of military courts is not clear – but he estimates at least 600. “Well over 1,000 people have been arrested since the crackdown began,” he said.

In an attempt to quell the uprising, the island’s rulers invited Saudi and other Gulf troops to Bahrain in March and called for a three-month state of emergency, or what it called the “National Safety Law”.

With the emergency law, came the military trials of hundreds of people in “National Safety Courts”. According to the lawyer, the courts were basically military courts, since both judge and general prosecutor were drawn from the military judicial system.

Death sentences were given out from trials that lasted less than two weeks. Many hearings lasted only a matter of minutes before verdicts were handed out. According to lawyers and defendants’ families, the main form of evidence in most cases were the confessions of the accused.

Facebooktwittermail

Disappearing dissent: How Bahrain buried its revolution

Time magazine reports: Every dictator worth his epaulets knows that the best way to nip a revolution in the bud is to have his opponents “disappear.” No body to mourn, no martyrs raised, and of course the ever-useful plausible deniability. But in Bahrain, with its tightly packed population of 230,000 citizens living on a small sandy archipelago in the Persian Gulf, it is difficult to bury the bodies. People notice. So what’s an authoritarian government to do when the people rise up and protest the regime? Bury the evidence and pretend it never happened.

Pearl Roundabout was the locus of Bahrain’s anti-government protests last spring, the Bahraini answer to Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The roundabout, located at the intersection of several major roads leading to the capital’s major business centers, was crowned by a soaring white monument constructed in 1982 on the occasion of the third Gulf Cooperation Council Summit, which was held in Manama that year. The six convex arches, one for each of the council member nations, were topped by a giant pearl, symbol of the region’s maritime heritage. Before oil transformed the coast from sand spit to skyscrapers, the gulf was best known for its pearling industry.

But soon after the protests started on Feb. 14, the monument took on a new symbolism—defiance against a regime that had repeatedly failed to deliver on a decade old promises of reform and political freedoms. As in Tahrir, protestors set up a camp around the monument, and used the hexagonal fountain at its base as a stage for rallies. In the early hours of Feb. 17, security forces broke up the camp with a combination of rubber bullets, tear gas and live ammunition. Six people died and the Bahraini revolution was born. What started as a unified protest soon devolved into a ugly sectarian split; Bahrain’s Sunni minority rallied in support of the Sunni royal family, and Shias, who make up an estimated 70% of the population, lobbied for rights they said they had long been denied. Protestors started calling their movement the Lulu Revolution after the Arabic word for pearl.

A month later the government ordered the monument pulled down. Officials declared on state TV that it had been “violated” and “desecrated” by the protestors, and needed to be “cleansed.” But by then the symbolism had already taken on a life of its own. Nothing remains of the monument now, just a barren patch of land encircled by not one, but two, layers of fencing and guarded by armed soldiers. Nevertheless the nation remains divided. You are either “pro-roundabout,” meaning you want reform. Or “anti-roundabout,” meaning you prefer the status quo.

Even your choice of coffee is a declaration of allegiance: The Costa Coffee franchise, which is owned by an apolitical Shia businessman, is considered “pro-roundabout.” Starbucks’ franchise in Bahrain, owned by a presumably bemused Kuwaiti, is anti. Jassim Hussein Ali, a well-known member of the Shia opposition Wefaq party and, until the party resigned in protest last spring, a member of Parliament, was recently approached at his neighborhood Starbucks and told that he might be more comfortable at a Costa. “The guy made it sound like a joke, but the kind of joke that wasn’t really a joke,” he told me over coffee a few weeks later. We met, of course, at Costa.

Efforts to bury the revolution haven’t stopped with the destruction of monuments. The half-dinar, Bahrain’s highest value coin ($1.5), features the monument. It has completely disappeared from circulation. So quickly and so quietly that no one knew to retain any as mementos. “They were just gone one day,” says Fatima Haji. “It’s revenge. They [the government] want nothing that is a reminder of our protest.”

Facebooktwittermail

Report finds Bahrain systematically tortured political detainees

McClatchy reports: An international human rights panel concluded Wednesday that the Sunni Muslim government of the small gulf island of Bahrain carried out “deliberate” and “systematic” torture against many of the 2,929 people it arrested last spring during protests demanding more democracy.

The panel, headed by Egyptian-born U.S. lawyer Cherif Bassiouni, also said the Bahraini government systematically used excessive force in arrests, deprived defendants of due process in special military courts, and allowed an atmosphere of impunity to take hold, where no one was accountable for upholding Bahrain’s own laws.

Bassiouni also dismissed the Bahrain government’s allegations that Iran, whose population, like Bahrain’s, is majority Shiite Muslim, interfered in the uprising. The evidence presented to the commission “does not establish a discernible link” between specific incidents in Bahrain and the Iranian government, he wrote.

At least 35 people died in the two months after the protests began Feb. 14, including three police officers allegedly killed by demonstrators; 4,439 people were fired from their jobs and charged with joining the protests; and 534 students were expelled from university for the same reason, the report said. In addition, the government destroyed or severely damaged more than 40 places of worship, almost all Shiite.

Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who established the commission in June, welcomed the report for identifying the “serious shortcomings” in his government’s response to the demonstrations. He promised legal reforms to ensure free speech and prohibit torture and said that officials who violated the law would be held accountable and replaced.

Facebooktwittermail

In rubble-strewn Sitra, faces of the young foretell a grim future for Bahrain

Family members in Sitra in March mourned a 30-year-old man killed by security forces. Government officials are suggesting the crisis in Bahrain has ended. No one in Sitra seems to agree.

Reporting from Sitra in Bahrain, Anthony Shadid writes: Sometimes a name suggests a condition. There was Beirut a generation ago, Baghdad more recently. In Bahrain, a Persian Gulf state so polarized that truth itself is a matter of interpretation, it is Sitra. Here, the faces of young men foretell a future for the country that looks like the rubble-strewn and violent streets of this town.

On a recent night, after clashes that erupt almost daily, one of them entered the house of a relative, squinting as though he had stumbled from a dungeon into the sun. Tear gas. His friend smirked as he showed the smooth scars left by rubber bullets fired at his leg and chest. Another shrugged as he removed his shirt to reveal a back scarred by pellets.

“Sitra,” said the friend, Sanad, “is the crisis.”

When the protests erupted in Bahrain in February, activists cast them as part of the Arab revolts, the wave of tumult that has upended an old order from Tunisia to Syria this year. That was before Saudi Arabia intervened militarily, before a crackdown ensued on the Shiite Muslim majority that was so sweeping they compared it to apartheid, before the most hard-line elements in the Sunni Muslim ruling family became ascendant.

Government officials today suggest that the crisis has ended, even as they acknowledge the damage it wrought in relations between Sunnis and Shiites in a country that had managed relative openness and even cosmopolitanism despite its entrenched inequality. “An open wound,” said Sheik Abdel-Aziz bin Mubarak al-Khalifa, a senior government counselor. But, he added, “We are in a much better place than we were three months ago.”

No one in Sitra seems to agree. This Shiite town of 80,000, a once-bucolic village of fishing and farming turned into a tableau of urban distress, is so restive that even opposition leaders shake their heads at its defiance. Nearly a third of the protesters killed — 10 so far — have come from Sitra, a half-hour drive from the capital, Manama, seething in a caldron of politicization, hardship and repression.

Though the clashes are nothing new — the 1990s witnessed similar bouts — their persistence and breadth signal the intractability of Bahrain’s conflict and mirror the unrest between the police and youths in other neglected Shiite towns.

“Sitra is a miniature version of Bahrain,” said Muhammad, another youth here, who like others interviewed did not want to be identified by his full name.

Added Sanad, his friend: “We are still here, we are demanding, and we exist.”

In scenes redolent of Hama in Syria, or parts of Tahrir Square at the height of Egypt’s uprising, youths build barricades at night to keep out the hated police, then remove some of them in the morning. There are telephone poles and cinder blocks and living room chairs and large trash bins, overturned and disgorging their soggy contents. The police have taken to foot patrols, given the difficulty of navigating the streets. Youths stand on corners, passing their own intelligence by cellphone, Twitter and Skype.

Even the fortresslike walls around the local police station are awash in graffiti, despite their ritual whitewashing. The slogans that remain bear the youths’ messages, revealed by the headlights of the occasional car driving on dark and empty streets. “Down with Hamad,” one reads, in a message to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. “We will only kneel before God,” declares another. Nearby, a slogan in red says, “The movement continues.”

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. awaits inquiry ahead of Bahrain arms deal

Al Jazeera reports: The US has said that it will consider a special investigation of alleged human rights abuses in Bahrain before moving ahead with a $53m arms deal to the Gulf kingdom.

In a letter to Ron Wyden, a US Democratic senator, and in public statement, the state department said on Tuesday that it shared congressional misgivings about Bahrain’s treatment of protesters and would await the results of a special inquiry established by the king.

The commission’s report to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa is due on October 30.

“That’s something we would look at closely,” Mark Toner, the State Department spokesman, said, speaking about the commission’s report.

“We’re going to continue to take human rights considerations into account as we move toward the finalization of this deal.”

He added that several procedural steps remain before the US could deliver the weapons to Bahrain and noted the sale pertained to equipment for Bahrain’s “external defence purposes”.

Wyden and Jim McGovern, a US Democratic representative, have introduced a resolution to block the arms sale to Bahrain, which includes Humvee combat vehicles and missiles.

Facebooktwittermail

With $53 million arms sale, U.S condones ongoing repression of Bahraini people

Last week, Josh Rogin reported: Five Democratic senators wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday to ask her to delay a planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain because of the island kingdom’s continued violence against protesters.

“We recognize the administration’s commitment to the United States’ strategic relationship with Bahrain… However, the Bahrain government’s repressive treatment of peaceful protesters during the past several months is unacceptable,” the senators wrote in their Oct. 12 letter [PDF], obtained by The Cable.

“The United States must make it clear to the government of Bahrain that its ongoing human rights violations and unwillingness to acknowledge legitimate demands for reform have a negative impact on its relationship with the United States.”

The letter’s signatories were Senate Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee chairman Robert Casey (D-PA), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The letter accuses the Bahrain government of torture and notes reporting by Human Rights Watch that states Bahrain’s government has killed 34 protesters, arrested 1,400 more, and dismissed 3,600 people from their jobs for anti-government activities.

“Completing an arms sale to Bahrain under the current circumstances would weaken U.S. credibility at a critical time of democratic transition in the Middle East,” the senators wrote.

Today, Gulf News reports: Washington has finalised a $53 million (Dh195 million) weapons deal with Bahrain, a top US diplomat has said. “Congress has expressed no opposition to this sale,” said Stephen Seche, Deputy US Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Peninsula Affairs.

The deal is part of a move to defend Bahrain from aggression, Seche said at a roundtable meeting, local media reported.

The official said that the US looked forward to the recommendations by an international panel that investigated the events that hit Bahrain in February and March and their consequences.

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), set up in June, is scheduled to announce its findings on October 30. The BICI, locally known as the Bassiouni Commission, after its leader Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni an expert in international criminal, human rights and humanitarian law, has interviewed thousands of people in its quest to appreciate what really happened.

“I think we would like to wait for the Commission report to speak for itself. We have been encouraged by the process that has ensued here since the Commission first arrived in Bahrain. They have been very thorough and Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni has spoken publicly about the response. He has been encouraged by the receptivity of all aspects of the Bahraini government to probe into the different questions, their need to get to as much information in the time they had,” Seche said.

“This is a positive development and we believe that the Commission’s findings will reflect a process which has been thorough and comprehensive and very professional. We will look forward to the recommendations,” he was quoted as saying.

This week, the “Manama Document: Bahrain’s road to freedom and democracy,” a joint document written by opposition groups, was released. It calls on the monarchy to relinquish political power.

In the presence of an unelected government under statesmanship of a single person for 40 years, some 80 per cent of public land ended being controlled by senior members from the royal family and other influential figures. Consequently, this has placed constraints on availability of lands for the purposes of developing projects for housing, municipality, education and health facilities.

Still, the country suffers from an acute poor distribution of wealth and widespread poverty notwithstanding Bahrain being an oil exporting nation, exporting some 200,000 barrels per day. Wrong policies like extending citizenship to foreign nationals have further undermined distribution of wealth in the country.

Against a backdrop of political dictatorship, economic failure and social confusion of government policies, people of Bahrain had pressed for change. Popular demands date back to 1923 with calls made for participation in decision making and 1938 for having an elected assembly with full legislator and regulatory powers. In reality, popular uprisings kept reemerging almost like those of 1954, 1965 and still 1994-2000, the largest of its kind at the time. Thus, there were the revolts of 1954 plus that of March 1965 as well as that of 1994-2000.

Still, affected primarily by events in Tunisia and Egypt as part of Arab Spring, nearly half of Bahrain’s people took to the streets in early 2011 pressing for democracy, respect of human rights and sustained human development. Yet, the demands call for retaining the royal family in terms of ruling and governing without powers, as a true constitutional monarchy.

In short, Bahrain is undergoing rivalry between two camps, one demanding democracy, comprising of people of all walks of life and diverse ideologies with another struggling to maintain the status quo despite need for addressing political, economic and social challenges.

Last month, in an editorial, the Washington Post called on Congress to block the sale of arms to a regime that continues to repress its people.

The rulers of Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf that hosts the U.S. 5th Fleet, undoubtedly worry that their harsh crackdown on a peaceful pro-democracy movement could damage vital relations with Washington. The government has hired a pricey Washington lobbying firm and regularly dispatches senior officials to stroke the administration and Congress. It has repeatedly promised to free political prisoners, reverse a mass purge of suspected protesters from government jobs and negotiate meaningful reforms of the al-Khalifa monarchy, a Sunni dynasty that rules over a majority-Shiite population.

Yet the regime hasn’t kept its promises — and its unjustified and self-defeating repression goes on. The latest brazen step came Thursday, when a special security court sentenced 20 doctors and other medical professionals to lengthy prison terms after a grossly unfair trial. The doctors were charged with stockpiling weapons and trying to overthrow the regime; in fact, their offense was treating injured protesters who arrived at their hospital and reporting what they saw to international media. A host of human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, pronounced the trial a travesty; Human Rights First said the medics had given “consistent and credible accounts of being tortured into giving confessions.”

The convictions came just a day after a court upheld the convictions of 21 opposition leaders, including clerics, members of political parties, human rights activists and bloggers. None are guilty of violence, but all were nonetheless accused of terrorism; eight received life sentences. They, too, have offered credible reports of torture. Another human rights group, Freedom House, said the rulings continued “a pattern of repression that belies any promises of meaningful reform by the government.”

Such a unanimous verdict from human rights groups ought to spell trouble for a government that depends on the United States for defense and enjoys a free-trade agreement with it. Yet there is no sign of serious friction between the Obama administration and the al-Khalifa family. Administration spokesmen have largely kept quiet as the crackdown has proceeded. On the military front, it is business as usual. This month the Pentagon notified Congress of a plan to sell Bahrain armored Humvees and anti-tank missiles worth $53 million.

The message this sends is unmistakable: The regime’s crackdown will not affect its cozy relationship with the United States. This is dangerous for the United States as well as for Bahrain, because the government’s attempt to suppress legitimate demands for change from a majority of the population is ultimately doomed to failure. Bahrain’s ruling family should be given more reason to worry about its standing in Washington. A congressional hold on the arms package would be a good way to start.

Facebooktwittermail

Saudi Arabia needs powerful enemies more than ever

Tariq Alhomayed, Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, advises his readers that they should develop their understanding of the Washington bombing plot by paying attention to official statements — not the media. As the editor of a publication supporting the Saudi government, I guess he sees himself as more of a mouthpiece of government than as a journalist.

Reviving one of the favorite claims of the neocons, Alhomayed insinuates that al Qaeda is a proxy for Iran:

Had the planned assassination of the Saudi Ambassador succeeded – God forbid – we would have seen a statement issued by al-Qaeda claiming that the operation was in retaliation to the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the real story would be lost as usual.

Alhomayed then gets even more carried away by likening Saudi Arabia to the World Trade Center and Iran to the 9/11 hijackers:

Tehran wants to target the only high-rise building in our region, namely Saudi Arabia, more than ever before. With the consecutive impact of the Arab political earthquake upon most principal Arab states, only one Arab edifice remains intact; Saudi Arabia, with its religious, economic and political weight.

What for others is likened to Spring, for the Saudis feels like an earthquake.

Ironically, Saudi Arabia and Iran both face the same enemy: democracy. Yet each must direct attention away from this internal threat by pointing to an external and existential threat. The fact that the US government is such a willing collaborator in this counter-democratic program suggests that it too is becoming unnerved by emerging and unwelcome democratic possibilities.

The Obama administration’s willingness to support Saudi Arabia’s counter-revolutionary efforts has nowhere been more evident than in Washington’s tepid response to the brutal suppression of Bahrain’s democracy movement. This has provided part of the context in which the Saudis now feel at liberty to inject yet another twist to a story that is still being written.

McClatchy reports:

[A]n adviser to the Saudi government said that Gholam Shakuri, named in the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal complaint as the Iranian official supporting the plot, was already known to the Saudi government as one of the officers who directed Iranian support to Shiite Muslims in Bahrain when they rose up in February to demand political rights from the minority Sunni regime.

“The officer does exist, and we have known him for a while,” said the adviser, Nawaf Obeid. He said that based on telephone intercepts and other intelligence, the Bahraini and Saudi governments believe that Shakuri, a colonel, had urged protesters to go to the Saudi embassy and backed a plan to take control of Bahrain’s state television.

Like Gaddafi, the Saudis want to cast the Arab Awakening as a destabilizing force, not only as great as the threat from terrorism but intimately tied to terrorism.

Meanwhile, the people of Bahrain understand that an American president who shows much more concern about the danger posed by a scatterbrained used-car salesman than he does about the threat the Bahrain government poses to its own people, also know that the struggle for freedom is one they must continue to fight largely on their own. Obama has no tangible support to offer.

Reuters reports:

In a defiant show of unity, Bahrain opposition parties have jointly denounced the Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab island as a police state and demanded a transition to a constitutional monarchy.

Five groups, including the main Shi’ite party Wefaq and the secular Waad party, vowed to keep up a pro-democracy campaign with peaceful rallies and marches — despite a Saudi-backed government crackdown that crushed similar protests in March.

In their “Manama Document,” the first such joint statement since the unrest, the opposition groups said Bahrain was a police state akin to those that prevailed in Egypt and Tunisia before popular uprisings swept their leaders from power.

The document, issued on Wednesday, said the ruling Al Khalifa family’s role should be to “govern without powers” in a constitutional monarchy, drawing attacks from pro-government media which described it as a power grab by majority Shi’ites.

Unrest still roils Bahrain months after the ruling family brought in troops from Sunni allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to help crush a protest movement they said was fomented by Iran and had Shi’ite sectarian motives.

The government says nightly clashes between police and Shi’ite villagers and other forms of civil disobedience are hurting the economy of the banking and tourism hub. Many firms have relocated elsewhere in the Gulf.

A military court has convicted 21 opposition figures, human rights campaigners and online activists who led the protests of trying to overthrow the ruling system. Eight were jailed for life. Waad leader Ibrahim Sharif, a Sunni, received a five-year sentence.

“In pursuit of democracy, opposition forces intend to fully and solely embrace peaceful measures,” the Manama Document said, calling for a direct dialogue between the government and opposition, backed by unspecified international guarantees.

Facebooktwittermail

Jailed doctors call for U.S. support in Bahrain

The Washington Post reports: The relatively muted U.S. response to the sentencing this week of doctors, teachers and opposition activists in Bahrain is renewing calls there for the Obama administration to take a stronger line against rights abuses in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.

Dozens of people detained after huge anti-government protests in February have been tried under emergency law in the
quasi-military National Safety Court, and in recent days were given prison terms ranging from three years to life. A civilian court has ordered the retrial of 20 doctors, but at least 80 more people sentenced for crimes that include organizing illegal gatherings remain in prison.

Ali Alekri, a surgeon sentenced to a 15-year prison term, said he had been convicted only because he had treated injured protesters and because, like most of those involved in the uprising, he is a Shiite Muslim.

“The international community did nothing,” said Alekri, speaking by telephone from Bahrain, where he has been released on bail. “We expect pressure from the Americans, and we do not know why they did not do that. Possibly there is a conflict of interest.”

Alekri said that he had been beaten, that his family had been threatened and that he had been forced to sign a confession while in prison — charges echoed by others.

Bahrain is a key Middle Eastern ally for the United States, and government opponents say that status has led Washington to look the other way amid widespread allegations of torture and illegal detentions. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is anchored in Bahrain.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement that the United States was “deeply disturbed” by the sentencing of 20 medical professionals and urged the Bahraini government to commit to transparent judicial proceedings. But officials have stopped short of directly condemning Bahrain’s authorities.

Facebooktwittermail

Convicted Bahraini doctors, nurses urge U.N. to investigate their protest-linked jail sentences

The Associated Press reports:

Bahraini doctors and nurses convicted of links to anti-government protests and sentenced to long prison terms appealed to the U.N. chief Saturday to investigate their claims of abuse and judicial violations in the trial.

The medical professionals — whose sentences range from five to 15 years — are appealing the security court’s ruling and speaking out against the wider crackdown by the Gulf kingdom’s Sunni rulers against protests for greater rights by the Shiite majority.

The trial has been closely watched by rights groups that have criticized Bahrain’s prosecution of civilians at the special security court, which was set up under martial law-style rule that was lifted in June. The U.N. human rights office and the U.S. State Department are among those questioning the use of the court, which has military prosecutors and both civilian and military judges.

The doctors and nurses worked at the state-run Salmaniya Medical Center close to the capital’s Pearl Square, which became the epicenter of Bahrain’s uprising, inspired by other revolts across the Arab world. The authorities saw the hospital’s mostly Shiite staff — some of whom participated in pro-democracy street marches — as protest sympathizers, although the medics claimed they treated all who needed care.

“During the times of unrest in Bahrain, we honored our medical oath to treat the wounded and save lives. And as a result, we are being rewarded with unjust and harsh sentences,” said a statement released by the medics after the court’s ruling.

The group was convicted Thursday on charges that include attempting to topple the Gulf kingdom’s rulers and spreading “fabricated” stories. In a separate trial, the security court sentenced a protester to death for the killing of a police officer during the clashes that began in February.

Facebooktwittermail

Bahrain boils under the lid of repression

Anthony Shadid reports:

The battle began soon after sundown. And for the next six hours, in air heavy with heat and tear gas, phalanxes of police officers in helmets battled scores of youths in ski masks, as customers at a Costa Coffee not far away sat like spectators.

No one won in the clashes, which erupt almost every night in this Persian Gulf state. Five months after the start of a ferocious crackdown against a popular uprising — so sweeping it smacks of apartheidlike repression of Bahrain’s religious majority — many fear that no one can win.

“This is all cutting so deep,” said Abdulnabi Alekry, an activist whose car was stopped at one of the checkpoints of trash bins, wood and bricks the youth had fashioned during the clash in August. “The fabric here was never that strong, and now it is torn.”

In the revolts that have roiled the Middle East this year, toppling or endangering a half-dozen leaders, Bahrain, an island kingdom once best known for its pearls and banks, has emerged as the cornerstone of a counterrevolution to stanch demands for democracy. While the turmoil elsewhere has proved unpredictable — the ascent of Islamists in Egypt, the threat of civil war in Syria and the prospect of anarchy in Yemen — Bahrain suggests that the alternative, a failed uprising cauterized by searing repression, may prove no less dangerous.

The crackdown here has won a tactical and perhaps ephemeral victory through torture, arrests, job dismissals and the blunt tool of already institutionalized discrimination against the island’s Shiite Muslim majority. In its wake, sectarian tension has exploded, economic woes have deepened, American willingness to look the other way has cast Washington as hypocritical and a society that prides itself on its cosmopolitanism is colliding with its most primordial instincts. Taken together, the repression and warnings of radicalization may underline an emerging dictum of the Arab uprisings: violence begets violence.

Facebooktwittermail

Bahrain to citizens living abroad: Spy on countrymen, no protests permitted

MSNBC reports:

Bahrainis living abroad have been ordered to spy on their countrymen in the wake of a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Documents containing “loyalty pledges” — which also require expats to promise they will not protest against the tiny Gulf state’s government — have been sent to students attending university in the U.K.

Some Bahrainis told msnbc.com that they feel abandoned by Western leaders in the face of an alleged campaign of intimidation that extends far beyond the country’s borders.

Alaa Shehabi writes:

For the first time in its history, Bahrain has embarked on mass military trials of hundreds of civilians on fatuous charges of crimes against the state. While more than 1,000 remain in detention, the opposition estimates that 400 are going through the process of military trials and 100 have been convicted so far. The swift summary justice churned out in these tribunals are a throwback to early 20th century Stalin show trials, designed to punish and humiliate dissenters. One of those being tried is my husband, Ghazi Farhan. On June 21, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment.

Having been born and educated in the UK, I moved to Bahrain in 2009 to marry Ghazi Farhan, a 31-year-old energetic businessman, leaving a respectable job in Cambridge to start a new family life in the land of my ancestors. Little did I imagine that in 2011, when the Arab Spring hit the shores of this island, it would be swiftly nipped in the bud, and would sweep my blossoming family along with it.

On April 12, on his way back from his lunch break, my husband was abducted from his office car park. Blindfolded, handcuffed and taken away by unknown plain-clothed men. Some 48 days later, he was summoned before the Orwellian-named “National Safety Court”, a military tribunal. He was charged with participating in an illegal assembly of more than five persons (having visited the Pearl Roundabout) and spreading false information on the internet (referring to a single Facebook comment). Therein began an extraordinary ordeal of Ghazi’s military trial and his sentencing.

Joseph Stalin introduced “the show trial” – secretive military tribunals that bypass the judiciary – during the Great Purge of the 1930s. It appears that Bahrain has taken a chapter straight out of Stalin’s textbook, in which verdicts are predetermined and then justified through the use of coerced confessions, obtained through torture and threats against defendents’ families. The only new addition to this chapter is that the government of Bahrain has insisted, since the 1980s, on airing these filmed confessions on state TV – often with the defendant apologising to the king. Ayat al Qurmuzi, a poet sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for reading a poem critical of the king, had one such confession aired, possibly to pave the way for some kind of royal pardon.

Credible reports from now-free detainees who were held with Ayat have said how a toilet brush was forced into her mouth. All those on trial are “traitors to the state”, says the relentless propaganda of hate speech, spewed on state media – a chapter in the Arab Tyrant’s manual that could have been written by Goebbels. The media has described protestors as “termites” and Shia as “the evil group”; they have dehumanised “the other”, who deserve treatment worse than animals.

Since March, hundreds have shared a similar experience to mine. There are several stages to the ordeal that are particularly distressing for all involved. The first stage is the sudden arrest, in a dawn raid or at a checkpoint, or in some cases, at work, and then they are taken away to an unknown location by unknown forces and for long periods of time. In Ghazi’s case, 48 days.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports:

As the summer heat sets in, most university students in Bahrain are eagerly looking forward to getting out of class. But 19 year-old Mohammed and his friends are struggling to get back in.

Local rights groups say over 400 mostly Shi’ite students have been expelled from Bahraini universities in recent months, charged with participating in the “unauthorized protests” which shook the Gulf island kingdom earlier this year.

Mohammed, a second year student at Bahrain University, described a string of student dismissals since March, in which officials used protesters’ own Facebook postings and YouTube videos against them to identify students who joined demonstrations or criticized the government online.

“There is an aggressive with-us-or-against-us mentality,” he said, declining to give his full name for fear of further government reprisals. “If you went out to the streets to ask for your rights, now you must be punished.”

Facebooktwittermail

Bahrain: PR mercenaries, their dictator masters, and the human rights stain

Thor Halvorssen writes:

Maryam al-Khawaja took the stage at the Oslo Freedom Forum last Tuesday and stunned the audience with her experiences of government violence in the Kingdom of Bahrain. She described the killing of student protestors, the torture of democracy advocates, and how human rights defenders are “disappeared.” Maryam also detailed how troops from a neighboring dictatorship, Saudi Arabia, rushed into Bahrain to prop up the crown prince’s regime.

Ali Abdulemam, a renowned Bahraini blogger, was also invited to the Oslo Freedom Forum. Ali was imprisoned by his government in September 2010 for “spreading false information.” After being released on February 23, he enthusiastically accepted his speaking invitation and plans were made for his travel. And then he disappeared. No one has seen or heard from him since March 18.

Beyond disappearing bloggers and rights activists, Bahrain also tries to disappear criticism. The government has been aided by a coterie of “reputation management” experts, including professionals from the Washington, D.C., offices of Qorvis Communications and the Potomac Square Group, in addition to Bell Pottinger out of their offices in London and Bahrain.

Within minutes of Maryam’s speech (streamed live online) the global Bahraini PR machine went into dramatic overdrive. A tightly organized ring of Twitter accounts began to unleash hundreds of tweets accusing Maryam of being an extremist, a liar, and a servant of Iran. Simultaneously, the Oslo Freedom Forum’s email account was bombarded with messages, all crudely made from a simple template, arguing that Maryam al-Khawaja is an enemy of the Bahraini people and a “traitor.” Most of the U.S.-based fake tweeting, fake blogging (flogging), and online manipulation is carried out from inside Qorvis Communication’s “Geo-Political Solutions” division.

Rupert Wingfield Hayes writes:

Ask anybody who has experienced torture and they will tell you that almost everybody breaks in the end.

And one of the most effective ways of making someone sign a confession is to stop them sleeping.

In China, I once met a man who had confessed to killing his own wife after being kept awake by police for 10 days and nights.

His wife was alive.

So what the wife of one of the doctors in Bahrain told me was all the more disturbing.

In a brief meeting outside the court, her husband had told her he had been blindfolded and handcuffed, and forced to stand up for three weeks.

Forcing someone to stand does not sound like torture, but that is exactly why it is so effective.

Back in my hotel room, I trawled the internet and BBC archive for video of the men I had seen in the dock that morning.

It did not take long. There they were on the BBC and al-Jazeera speaking out passionately, as wounded protesters were rushed into the emergency room behind them.

One of the doctors, a softly spoken man called Ali Al Akri, struggled to hold back tears as he pleaded with the government to stop the killing, to stop shooting the protesters.

In court, the prosecutor had called Ali Al Akri the main ringleader of the doctors’ conspiracy.

He did not look like a ringleader to me. Passionate, angry, distraught, yes. The leader of an anti-government coup? No.

His real crime was to have spoken out to us, the foreign media. To have told the outside world what was going on inside his hospital. Of the effects of buckshot and tear gas. To show X-rays of high-velocity bullets embedded in protesters’ bodies.

They were images that brought shame and international opprobrium upon friendly, liberal, sophisticated Bahrain.

And it is for that, that the Bahrain doctors are now being punished.

As the world now turns its attention to more pressing stories – in Libya, Syria and beyond – there is a real danger that the Bahrain doctors will be forgotten and that the Bahrain authorities will be quietly allowed to get on with persecuting those who dared to stand up and to speak out.

Facebooktwittermail

Life sentences for Bahrain activists

Al Jazeera reports:

Eight prominent activists accused of plotting a coup in Bahrain during protests earlier this year have been sentenced to life in prison, according to the country’s state news agency.

The court on Wednesday also sentenced other defendants, from among the 21 suspects on trial, to between two and 15 years in jail.

The Bahrain News Agency said the life sentences were issued against a prominent Shia political leader, Hassan Mushaima; activists Abdulhady al-Khawaja, Abduljalil al-Singace and five others.

Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera that many people were unhappy about the sentences.

“Abdulhady al-Khawaja is one of the most respected human rights activist in the whole Arab region, so people are very angry,” Rajab said.

“Hundreds of people have been brought up for charges in the past few days, and hundreds more are waiting to be tried.”

Facebooktwittermail

Bahraini blogger: State Dept knew ‘all the details’ of violent crackdown, stayed silent

Ali Gharib reports:

A Bahraini journalist and blogger spoke at the Netroots Nation conference today about how her country’s protest movement has been beaten back, the personal costs of supporting the uprising, and how the U.S. State Department remained silent.

Lamees Dhaif said that she supported the protest movement that became widespread in Bahrain following the initial outburst of the Arab Spring. “It was very simple,” she said. “Those people have rights.” But her outspoken support cost her jobs at three newspapers in one day and her family was targeted. “As bloggers, as journalist,” she said

we pay [very high] price of speaking loud. I don’t think any American citizen can understand what I’m saying. If we say one word that they consider wrong, they can punish you in every possible way. They can punish you, they can punish your family, they can hunt you everywhere. [They] tried to burned my house with family in, attacked my house. My brothers were hunted in their jobs; they were punished because of their sister. My sister [was] arrested for fifty days as a punishment to me, to force me to stop writing.

Dhaif is in the U.S. as part of a State Department-sponsored tour for foreign journalists.

Reuters reports:

The Obama administration has agreed to investigate concerns raised by the AFL-CIO labor federation that Bahrain has failed to live up to its obligations to protect workers rights under a free trade pact with the United States, the labor group said on Thursday.

“The egregious attacks on workers must end, and the Bahraini government’s systematic discrimination against and dismantling of unions must be reversed. These actions directly violate the letter and the spirit of the trade agreement,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

The Associated Press reports:

Bahrain’s ruler has canceled all vacations for top officials next month. A special center and mediator have been named for talks with opposition groups that are proposed to open July 1.

Now the question is whether anyone will show up.

The Shiite groups that speak on behalf of protesters — who took to the streets four months ago to demand greater rights — have shown no rush to embrace the appeals for dialogue by the Sunni monarchs they accuse of creating a two-tier society in the strategic Gulf kingdom.

The possible failure to open talks could be interpreted as far more significant than simply a payback snub by Bahrain’s Shiite majority after unrest that’s claimed at least 31 lives and left hundreds of people detained or expelled from jobs and studies.

It would serve as clear recognition that the complexities on the tiny island — drawing in heavyweight issues such as U.S. military interests and Arab worries over Iran — are too vast to solve over cups of tea between the rulers and the opposition.

“Events seem to have gone too far and too fast for some kind of quick fix through talks,” said Toby Jones, an expert on Bahrain at Rutgers University.

For its size — about 525,000 citizens on an island that can be crossed in 30 minutes — Bahrain perhaps packs more high-stakes challenges that any of the other Arab uprisings.

Facebooktwittermail

U.S. lists ally Bahrain with human rights violators Iran, Syria

Bloomberg reports:

The United States put Bahrain, a Persian Gulf ally, in the company of Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe on its list of human rights violators presented to the UN Human Rights Council.

Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has tried to crush protests that have wracked the country since February, as the Shiite majority population has agitated for the Sunni Muslim monarchy to allow greater economic opportunities and freedoms.

“The Bahraini government has arbitrarily detained workers and others perceived as opponents,” said Eileen Donohoe, the U.S. ambassador to the council, in a statement to the council today. “The United States is deeply concerned about violent repression of the fundamental freedoms of association, expression, religion and speech of their citizens.”

Facebooktwittermail