Let them eat doughnuts: the US response to Bahrain’s oppression
\nby: Mehdi Hasan – guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 July 2011 20.25 BST <\/p>\n
While the west averts its eyes, Bahrain’s people are subjected to brutal suppression<\/p>\n
Pity the poor people of Bahrain. They have been shot, beaten, tear-gassed \u2013 and patronised. On 7 March, at the height of the pro-democracy protests in the tiny Gulf island kingdom, a crowd gathered outside the US embassy in Manama, the capital, carrying signs that read “Stop supporting dictators” and “Give me liberty or give me death”. A US embassy official emerged from the building with a box of doughnuts for the protesters, prompting a cleric in the crowd to remark: “These sweets are a good gesture, but we hope it is translated into practical actions.”<\/p>\n
It hasn’t been. Syria was subjected to sanctions and Libya to air strikes; Bahrain, however, was rewarded with visits from the Pentagon’s two most senior officials \u2013 the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, and the then defence secretary, Robert Gates. Disgracefully, at the same time as peaceful protesters were being rounded up and imprisoned, both men offered full-throated endorsements of King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa’s brutal regime.<\/p>\n
The Sunni Khalifas have ruled Shia-majority Bahrain \u2013 officially a constitutional monarchy \u2013 since 1783. Bahrain’s prime minister since 1971, Prince Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa \u2013 the king’s uncle \u2013 has the dubious distinction of being the longest-serving unelected prime minister in the world. Unemployment stands at 15% \u2013 the highest in the Gulf \u2013 and Shias have long complained of discrimination and disenfranchisement.<\/p>\n
The Arab spring reached Bahrain on Valentine’s Day; protesters \u2013 both Sunni and Shia \u2013 arrived in Manama’s Pearl Square on 14 February to demand political freedoms, democratic reforms and greater equality for the Shia majority. They were met with rubber bullets and teargas; three days later security forces switched to live ammunition. Within a few weeks some 2,000 Sunni soldiers from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had arrived in Bahrain, at the invitation of the Khalifas, to impose martial law \u2013 and, in doing so, poured oil on the fire of sectarian tensions. …more<\/a><\/p>\n