The west's silence over Bahrain smacks of double standards

Mathloom · May 1, 2011

Is this a surprise really? It's in the hands of Al Jazeera IMO, but that's a long story.

But then again, the Bahraini pro-democracy crowd have not IMO been harsh enough in condemning the Iranian government or demonstrated strongly enough that sunnis have nothing to fear in a democratic majority-shiite Bahrain.

While this wouldn't change the mind of the Bahraini gov't, I'm sure it would create far more support globally.

Mathloom · May 1, 2011

Thousands denounce Bahrain death sentences Article Photos
By Reuters Friday, 29 April 2011 5:53 PM

Thousands of Bahraini Shi'ites gathered before a revered cleric on Friday denounced death sentences given to protesters involved in pro-democracy unrest suppressed last month in the US-allied Gulf kingdom.

The verdict, handed down by a military court a day earlier to four men accused of killing two policemen in violent protests last month, could intensify sectarian tension in the Sunni Muslim-led state that hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.

"It's not true that they killed them," said a man who identified himself only as Moussa, after praying at the mosque of Sheikh Issa Qassim, as a police helicopter circled overhead. "The government made it up just like a movie."

He was referring to video footage that Bahraini authorities have circulated showing the two policemen smashed by a vehicle that sped through a crowd of protesters, some of whom appeared to then trample and kick the fallen men.

Police kept a tight grip on roads leading to the village where the mosque is located, turning back many vehicles.

The rulings were only the third time in over 30 years that the death penalty had been meted out against a Bahraini citizen.

They have further divided a country whose Shi'ite majority says it faces systematic discrimination, but whose Sunni leaders warn Shi'ite giant Iran is trying to extend its regional influence by manipulating its co-religionists.

"The sentence was appropriate," said Mohammad al-Ammadi, a Sunni lawmaker, citing what he saw as the extreme brutality of the killings. "This is the first time this happened in Bahrain."

The recent turmoil began with Shi'ite-led political protests in February demanding greater political liberties, a constitutional monarchy and an end to sectarian discrimination. A few Shi'ite groups called for the abolition of the monarchy.

Bahraini Shi'ites say the ruling family denies them access to state employment and land, and point to the naturalisation of foreigners from predominantly Sunni countries, some of whom man security forces, as proof of a policy of sectarian rule.

Bahrain, blaming the protests on regional powers including Iran, declared martial law and called in troops from Sunni-led Gulf neighbours to bolster its forces as they set about crushing demonstrations last month.

In the aftermath of the protests, hundreds of people have been detained, and at least three have died in custody. Human rights groups say hundreds of people have been sacked from public sector jobs and that Bahraini forces have seized patients and health workers from hospitals that were a site of protests.

The latter assertion figured in a rare, mild rebuke of Bahrain from the United States on the heels of the court ruling, which included life sentences for three other men.

"Security measures will not resolve the challenges faced by Bahrain," State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke-Fulton said in an emailed statement.

"We are also extremely troubled by reports of ongoing human rights abuses and violations of medical neutrality in Bahrain. These actions only exacerbate frictions in Bahraini society."

Germany urged Bahrain on Friday to rescind the death sentences. "This draconian punishment impedes the process of rapprochement und reconciliation in Bahrain," German foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke told a news conference.

Bahrain says the court proceedings were fair, that the condemned men may appeal, and that it has taken steps only against public employees who committed crimes during the unrest.

The men sentenced to death were Ali Abdullah Hassan al-Sankis, Qassim Hassan Matar Ahmad, Saeed Abduljalil Saeed and Isa Abdullah Kadhim Ali. All are 20 or 21 years old.

The island kingdom announced earlier this week that 312 people detained under martial law had been released and about 400 others referred for prosecution.

At least 29 people have been killed since the protests started, all but six of them Shi'ites. The six included two foreigners - an Indian and a Bangladeshi - and four policemen.

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/thousands-denounce-bahrain-death-sentences-396957.html
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Good article with decent insight.

Invisible Fan · May 1, 2011

Kwame said: ↑

The West isn't silent on this issue. The US gave the green light for Saudi Arabia to intervene and crush the people's democratic movement in Bahrain. I guess this is one family dictatorship the United States is not willing to abandon.
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A member who I forgot posted this article from the Asia Times that detailed the writer's views on the "deal".
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html

I'm not sure how much has been corroborated as Pepe's articles look like CounterPunch material (blending personal analysis and facts without sourcing them makes you sound nutty, Pepe), but a lot makes sense on the surface and definitely fits the realpolitiks we saw in presidents other than Dubya.

If mostly true, a move like this would be so unsavory to admit that an editor from the corporate press wouldn't have anything to gain from it.

At least they can air another piece about how Wikileaks is treasonous.

Dubious · May 1, 2011

Junkies don't jack with their dealers.

T-Mac1 · May 14, 2011

Patrick Cockburn: Bahrain is trying to drown the protests in Shia blood

World View: Claiming that the opposition is being orchestrated by Iran, the al-Khalifa regime has unleashed a vicious sectarian clampdown

"Let us drown the revolution in Jewish blood" was the slogan of the tsars when they orchestrated pogroms against Jews across Russia in the years before the First World War. The battle-cry of the al-Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain ever since they started to crush the pro-democracy protests in the island kingdom two months ago might well be "to drown the revolution in Shia blood". Just as the tsars once used Cossacks to kill and torture Jews and burn their synagogues, so Bahrain's minority Sunni regime sends out its black-masked security forces night after night to terrorise the majority Shia population for demanding equal political and civil rights.

Usually troops and police make their raids on Shia districts between 1am and 4am, dragging people from their beds and beating them in front of their families. Those detained face mistreatment and torture in prison. One pro-democracy activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, brought before a military court last week with severe facial injuries, said he had suffered four fractures to the left side of his face, including a broken jaw that needed four hours' surgery.

The suppression of the protests came after Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Co-operation Council – also known as the "kings' club" of six Gulf monarchs – sent 1,500 troops to Bahrain to aid the crackdown, which began on 15 March. It soon became clear that the government is engaged in a savage onslaught on the entire Shia community – some 70 per cent of the population – in Bahrain.

First came a wave of arrests with about 1,000 people detained, of whom the government claims some 300 have been released, though it will not give figures for those still under arrest. Many say they were tortured and, where photographs of those who died under interrogation are available, they show clear marks of beating and whipping. There is no sign yet that King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa's declaration that martial law will end on 1 June is anything more than a propaganda exercise to convince the outside world, and foreign business in particular, that Bahrain is returning to normal.

The repression is across the board. Sometimes the masked security men who raid Shia villages at night also bulldoze Shia mosques and religious meeting places. At least 27 of these have so far been wrecked or destroyed, while anti-Shia and pro-government graffiti is often sprayed on any walls that survive.

The government is scarcely seeking to conceal the sectarian nature of its repression. Defending the destruction of Shia mosques and husseiniyahs (religious meeting houses), it claims that they were constructed without building permission. Critics point out that one of them was 400 years old. Nor is it likely that the government has been seized with a sudden enthusiasm for enforcing building regulations since the middle of March.

The government is determined to destroy all physical rallying points for the protesters. One of the first such places to be destroyed was the Pearl Square monument, an elegant structure commemorating the pearl fishers of the Gulf, which was bulldozed soon after the square had been cleared of demonstrators. A measure of the government's paranoia is that it has now withdrawn its own half-dinar coins showing the iconic Pearl Square monument.

Facing little criticism from the United States, so concerned about human rights abuses in Libya, the al-Khalifa family is ruthlessly crushing opposition at every level. Nurses and doctors in a health system largely run by Shias have been beaten and arrested for treating protesters. Teachers and students are being detained. Some 1,000 professional people have been sacked and have lost their pensions. The one opposition newspaper has been closed. Bahraini students who joined protests abroad have had their funding withdrawn.

The original 14 February protest movement was moderate, contained Sunni as well as Shia activists, and went out of its way to be non-sectarian. Its slogans included demands that Bahrain's powerful prime minister for the past 40 years, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, step down and for fair elections. It also wanted equal rights for all, including an end to anti-Shia discrimination under which the majority were excluded from joining the 60,000-strong army, police and security forces. Security jobs went instead to Sunni recruits from Pakistan, Jordan, Syria and other Sunni states who were immediately given Bahraini citizenship.

Sometimes the anti-Shia bias is explicit. One pro-government newspaper prominently published a letter that compared the protesters to "termites", which are intelligent but multiply at alarming speed, and "are very similar to the 14 February group that tried to destroy our beautiful, precious country." The writer recommends exterminating the "white ants so they don't come back".

The purpose of the systematic torture and mistreatment inflicted on the detainees is first to create a feeling of terror in the civilian population. It is not only protesters or pro-democracy activists that are being targeted. Al-Jazeera satellite television, based in and funded by neighbouring Qatar, which played such a role in publicising protests and their attempted repression in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Libya, was initially much more reticent about reporting events in Bahrain. But al-Jazeera revealed this week that the Bahraini police have been raiding girls' schools, detaining and beating schoolgirls, and are accused of threatening to rape them.

One 16-year-old called "Heba" was taken with three of her schoolfriends and held for three days, during which they were beaten. She said an officer "hit me on the head and I started to bleed" and she was thrown against a wall. Although the girls were beaten severely, she said, they scarcely felt the pain because they were so frightened of being raped. The Bahraini opposition party Al Wefaq says that 15 girls' schools have been raided by the police and girls as young as 12 threatened with rape.

Aside from intimidation there is a further motive for the beatings and torture: namely, to extract evidence that, against all appearances, the opposition is planning armed revolt and is manipulated by foreign powers, notably Iran. The aim, in the case of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, was evidently to beat out of him a confession that he was attempting to "topple the regime forcibly in collaboration with a terrorist organisation working for a foreign country".

The al-Khalifas are aware that their strongest card in trying to discredit the opposition is to claim it has Iranian links. US embassy cables revealed by Wikileaks show that the Bahrain government was continually making this claim to a sceptical US embassy over the years, but has never provided any evidence. This propaganda claiming Iranian plots is crude, but plays successfully in Sunni Gulf states that see an Iranian hand behind every Shia demand for equal rights and an end to discrimination. It also gets an audience in Washington, conscious that its Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain and fearful of anything that could strengthen Iran.

The Bahraini monarchy, having effectively declared war on the majority of its own people, is likely to win in the short term because its opponents are not armed. The cost will be that Bahrain, once deemed more liberal than its neighbours, is turning into the Gulf's version of Belfast or Beirut when they were convulsed by sectarian hatred.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...drown-the-protests-in-shia-blood-2284199.html

Well.. I guess Alkalifa regime is just as bad as Gaddafi and Bashar.

T-Mac1 · May 14, 2011

CNN report on Bahrain

<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7MEKkJVFKWI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Landry92 · May 15, 2011

Just went to my University today after a long break after the events in the university. Lot of cameras, Lot of Security and a lot of Fences had to walk maybe 30 min to get where I need to go

After several excelled Shia students were thrown after investigations arrested the same day tortured but thankfully released after short period of time.

I have been living in fear since they announced the university will be opened again this year because If you go you risk being harassed, arrested at any moment and if you drop out of this course you cant guarantee you'll be allowed back plus the possibility of suspicion and therefore being arrested(Any bahrani prison will make Sing Sing look like a 5 star hotel).

There promising signs like
# The current trail at Lahia International criminal court
# News of Unrest between the King and his uncle the PM
# The US congress paying attention to the situation with more aggressiveness
# Dispute between Bahrain and Qatar have pusher Al Jazeera to report a lot more but were not begging for their coverage

T-Mac1 · May 15, 2011

Landry92 said: ↑

Just went to my University today after a long break after the events in the university. Lot of cameras, Lot of Security and a lot of Fences had to walk maybe 30 min to get where I need to go

After several excelled Shia students were thrown after investigations arrested the same day tortured but thankfully released after short period of time.

I have been living in fear since they announced the university will be opened again this year because If you go you risk being harassed, arrested at any moment and if you drop out of this course you cant guarantee you'll be allowed back plus the possibility of suspicion and therefore being arrested(Any bahrani prison will make Sing Sing look like a 5 star hotel).

There promising signs like
# The current trail at Lahia International criminal court
# News of Unrest between the King and his uncle the PM
# The US congress paying attention to the situation with more aggressiveness
# Dispute between Bahrain and Qatar have pusher Al Jazeera to report a lot more but were not begging for their coverage
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You mean the Hague ICC ? As for your 4th point, Aljazeera indeed have started to cover Bahrain, Here's the latest report which also contains a message to President Obama from oppressed Bahrainis :

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/201151511050523260.html

JuanValdez · May 16, 2011

ChrisBosh said: ↑

Guddafi may have massacred 3000-4000 in Benghazi, but it would have been over with. The total deaths have already surpassed that number a long time ago. A thousand or more people just died in Misrata alone in the last couple days. To act like lives were "saved" is beyond ridiculous.
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I didn't say lives were saved. Hell, the UN's probably killed more Libyan soldiers in bombing than would have been killed in Benghazi without an intervention. I said there wasn't a massacre in Benghazi. I think a massacre in Benghazi would have been much worse for the future of Libya than the shelling of Misrata. I never pretended like lives were saved. It's not a simple numbers game.

DaDakota · May 16, 2011

We can't fix every danged country, some of them need to help themselves....

DD

CrazyDave · May 16, 2011

Interesting in these articles how often, when decrying the problems in the country, that the US is named first... "in the US allied Gulf Kingdom" and "facing little criticism from the US...." not that the US is named at all, but first.

Mathloom · Nov 20, 2011

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3112/the-ongoing-struggle-in-bahrain_an-interview-with-

An informative opinion.

Alaa Shehabi (AS): I am Alaa Shehabi from Bahrain. I am a lecturer, economist, and writer by day. I am also the wife of a political detainee. My husband is called Ghazi Farhan, he is a businessman, completely apolitical.

A month after the Saudis invaded, he was arrested from his office car park. On that day, 12 April, he came home for lunch and played with our baby and then drove back to his office. I did not hear from him again. I went online and read on Twitter that Ghazi Farhan has been successfully arrested—someone from the intelligence network was tweeting about it, bragging about it. It was a very big shock. He was not expecting it; he was the guy that stayed away from this. He knows that politics is trouble in this part of the world, so he was not involved in any activism.

I am sure they went after my husband because of his relationship to me. I come from a strong opposition background, my father is an opposition activist in the United Kingdom. I was very active and I have never been quiet about my views. I think they knew of me so they selected one of us. I have seen his interrogation notes and I appear in most of them. It was punishment by proxy.

So, Ghazi was held for the next fifty days and then suddenly appeared in a military tribunal at the end of May. He was charged with participating in the protests. The technical term is "participating in an illegal assembly consisting of more than five persons," and he was also charged with spreading false information. And then in a matter of ten minutes, he was sentenced to three years in prison. It has been seven months since he was convicted. It has been a very difficult time for my family personally. But I would like to emphasize that in the prison he is in, he is one of at least five hundred people who have been arrested, charged, and convicted because of their participation or involvement in the political uprising.
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More at link.

mugrakers · Nov 20, 2011

Isn't Bahrain like the only country in the world that wasn't effected by this economic crisis? what the hell are people complaining about? Democracy? So you can let in the bankers and ruin your economy?

99 percent say no to this.

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