Kate Raphael: My arrest and deportation from Bahrain

Kate Raphael: My arrest and deportation from Bahrain
Kate Raphael – Witness Bahrain

It just began, and now it is over. Yesterday morning, I was sitting in a café in Manama, Bahrain, working on a blog called “Bahrain: First Impressions.” Now I am sitting at home in Oakland, trying to process what happened.

Valentine’s Day in Bahrain

On February 14, I woke after only a couple hours’ sleep and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was trembling with excitement and tension. #Feb14, the anniversary of the start of the ongoing revolution in Bahrain, was to be the Day of Return to Pearl (Lulu) Roundabout, the huge vacant lot in the center of Manama where protesters camped out for a month last year, until March 16, when 1,000 troops from across the bridge in Saudi Arabia and 500 police from the United Arab Emirates joined thousands of mercenaries working for the Bahraini police in evacuating the camp, destroying the monument at the center of the Roundabout, killing at least 6 and injuring hundreds.

Since then, at least 60 people have died in the ongoing revolution.

They celebrate Valentine’s Day in Bahrain. Nabeel Rajab, human rights leader, said the day I first met him,
“People asked me why I chose February 14 for the start of the uprising. I said so my wife will stop asking me to take her to an expensive restaurant.”
Nabeel’s wife spent this Valentine’s Day evening in the Na’eem police station, trying to get Nabeel out of detention.

I spent much of the day there myself. Right around the time Nabeel was being released on bail, I and five of my fellow Witness Bahrain team members were being escorted by police onto a plane to London, our visas cancelled for such crimes as not spending all our nights in the country in the same hotel, and engaging in “nontourist” activities while on a tourist visa.

The “nontourist activity” in question was an “illegal” march on Saturday. I found it very interesting that they were so focused on that march, which was completely peaceful on the part of the protesters, and was attacked by police with the ubiquitous gas and sound bombs, rather than the clashes I documented earlier in the week, in which riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at youths hurling Molotov Cocktails. I think that tells us a lot about what the government is trying to hide by whisking us out of the country.

At 3:30, our group of about two dozen internationals and Bahrainis set out from Nabeel’s house in a caravan to city center. On the way, we counted police vehicles.

“Nine jeeps and six buses,” announced one young man. …more