{"id":18451,"date":"2013-09-18T14:54:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T20:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=18451"},"modified":"2013-09-18T14:54:47","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T20:54:47","slug":"the-revolution-will-continue-until-the-tyrants-are-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=18451","title":{"rendered":"The Revolution will Continue Until the Tyrants Are Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bahrain\u2019s rebellion continues in spite of domestic and regional pressures<\/strong>
\n14 September, 2013 – Anna Jacobs – Morocco World News<\/p>\n

Charlottesville, Virginia – Arab League names Bahrain as destination for the Pan-Arab Human Rights Court in the midst of increasing limitations to freedom of assembly and on-going talks between the Saudi supported government and Shia opposition forces over political reform <\/p>\n

As the debate over diplomatic solutions and possible military intervention in Syria continues, developments in other countries have taken a second place in international news. However, one event struck me as particularly interesting and especially nonexistent in the US media: Bahrain has been chosen to host a pan-Arab human rights court. This choice was made at an Arab League meeting in Cairo and announced by the official Bahrain News Agency at the beginning of September.<\/p>\n

Aljazeera English cited the Bahrain foreign minister as saying that \u201cThe initiative to establish the court stems from the King\u2019s firm belief in the importance of human rights and basic human liberties,\u201d which was naturally met with much criticism from human rights activists in the country, as well as internationally, after King Hamad Al-Khalifa went to the Gulf Council Cooperation (GCC) to seek help in smothering Bahrain\u2019s political uprisings in 2011. Protests broke out in the country\u2019s capital Manama, in Pearl Square, during the early months of the Arab Spring, calling for greater political freedoms and an end to the royal family\u2019s absolute power. As a response to the King\u2019s request at the GCC, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent troops in to suppress the peaceful protestors.<\/p>\n

The US and Gulf countries; a marriage of convenience<\/p>\n

The subsequent crackdown on human rights defenders, as well as medical professionals that treated the protestors, has become infamous and a stain on the country\u2019s reputation. However, as Maryam AlKhawaja, the acting head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, argued, the lack of criticism from major western governments is nothing new.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gulf states are not held accountable for their human rights abuses. No one will take this seriously. For them to have a court such as this is a slap in the face to those who have documented abuses in Bahrain, for which there have been no consequences.\u201d She was quoted as saying by Aljazeera English. In other words, the choice of Bahrain as the locale for the pan-Arab Human Rights Courts and the lack of debate over this choice among both Arab and western governments represents a status-quo event of hypocritical hype\u2014which all too often characterizes western relations with Gulf countries, epitomized by the US-Saudi alliance.<\/p>\n

As the Shia majority called for political change against a Saudi allied Sunni monarchy, the United States found itself attempting to formulate a \u201cdiplomatic\u201d response to the widespread violence, arrest and imprisonment of activists and doctors, and the Saudi led military crackdown in the country. The monument in the Pearl Square was also torn down, in an attempt to emphasize the royal family\u2019s iron fist backed by a legion of supporting GCC-sanctioned tanks.<\/p>\n

Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa claimed that the demolition of the monument, signifying the nation\u2019s history as a location of pearl diving and a symbol of Arab Spring revolutionary fervor against autocracy, was an exercise in \u201crestoring law and order\u201d in typical despotic fashion.<\/p>\n

US reaction to the crackdown was especially dismissal, even compared to the reactionary positions taken by officials as dictators were taken down in both Tunisia and Egypt. \u201cStunned\u201d US officials advised Bahrain to show \u201crestraint\u201d after a particularly violent suppression of protests in April 2011. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed the government to quickly initiate a reform process that \u201cadvances the rights and aspirations of all the citizens of Bahrain.\u201d Yet the US government never recalled its ambassador or mentioned the threat of sanctions, and this was at the height of the Arab Spring\u2019s revolutionary zeal. In the over two years since this bloody event, the US has remained more or less silent on the subject of oppression in the island kingdom. The reason for this, of course, relates to the government\u2019s general relationship with Gulf countries as a regional supplier of oil, an ally against hostile governments such as Iran and Syria\u2019s Al-Assad, and the strategic significance of Bahrain in particular, as the location of the United States Fifth Naval Fleet.<\/p>\n

The Tamarod Bahrain Movement<\/p>\n

Mobilization against the Bahrain government has nonetheless continued in various forms for the last two and a half years, and the country\u2019s own Tamarod movement was begun by activists on August 14th of this year. The government\u2019s response to this initiative was a series of draconian laws restricting the freedom of assembly, to such a point that it was essentially a fiction, while also threatening to remove citizenship rights and apply severe sentences to opposition party members.<\/p>\n

In reaction to these oppressive security measures, Tamarod Bahrain Movement leader Hussein Youssef told the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir that \u201cAug. 14 marked the launch of a political project that will endure no matter how complicated the security situation becomes, because our reliance is on the strategy of popular street action, which does not end even if the movement\u2019s leadership is arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regional influences on government-opposition talks<\/p>\n

After a two month break in talks between the Bahraini opposition and government officials, they were reignited again on August 28, with a mind to both the domestic and regional situation. The sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict, especially the intensified Sunni Shia dichotomy, has strong implications on talks between the government and the opposition in Bahrain. A former Bahraini opposition member of Parliament, Abdulhadi Khalaf, who was also stripped of his citizenship by Bahrain\u2019s King this year, described this dynamic to al-Monitor:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe longer the Syrian crisis goes on, the bigger its implications for Bahrain. Inciting against the Alawites in Syria goes hand-in-hand with demonizing the Shiites in Bahrain\u2026.Before the Arab Spring, no one in Bahrain, no matter how arrogant, would have dared to call the opposition apostates. But that is normal today. The incitement campaigns aimed at raising funds or recruiting militants to fight in Syria have catalyzed and hardened the discourse of sectarian confrontation. Resolving the crisis in Syria through a regional and international agreement (Geneva II, for example) would make it easier to propose the same mechanism to resolve the crisis in Bahrain.\u201d …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Bahrain\u2019s rebellion continues in spite of domestic and regional pressures 14 September, 2013 – Anna Jacobs – Morocco World News Charlottesville, Virginia – Arab League names Bahrain as destination for the Pan-Arab Human Rights Court in the midst of increasing limitations to freedom of assembly and on-going talks between the Saudi supported government and Shia more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[708],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18452,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18451\/revisions\/18452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}