{"id":3143,"date":"2011-09-18T20:42:07","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T03:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3143"},"modified":"2011-09-18T20:42:07","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T03:42:07","slug":"bahrain-suffering-and-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=3143","title":{"rendered":"Bahrain Suffering and Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Shadid on Bahrain suffering<\/strong>
\n16 September, 2011<\/p>\n

“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 \u2014 the ascent of Islamists in Egypt, the threat of civil war in Syria and the prospect of anarchy in Yemen \u2014 Bahrain suggests that the alternative, a failed uprising cauterized by searing repression, may prove no less dangerous.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is a tinderbox, and anything could ignite it at any moment,\u201d said Ali Salman, the general secretary of Al Wefaq, Bahrain\u2019s largest legal opposition group. \u201cIf we can\u2019t succeed in bringing democracy to this country, then our country is headed toward violence. Is it in a year or two years? I don\u2019t know. But that\u2019s the reality.\u201dThe toll of the ensuing repression was grim: in a country of about 525,000 citizens, human rights groups say 34 people were killed, more than 1,400 people were arrested, as many as 3,600 people were fired from their jobs and four people died in custody after torture in what Human Rights Watch called \u201ca systematic and comprehensive crackdown to punish and intimidate government critics and to end dissent root and branch.\u201dFor decades, Bahrain\u2019s relative openness and entrenched inequality have made it one of the Arab world\u2019s most restive countries, as a Shiite majority numbering as much as 70 percent of the population seeks more rights from a Sunni monarchy that conquered the island in the 18th century. <\/p>\n

But February was a new chapter in the struggle, when the reverberations of Egypt and Tunisia reached Bahrain and, after bloody clashes, protesters seized a landmark known as Pearl Square, where they stayed for weeks. Activists trade stories of colleagues forced to eat feces in prison and high-ranking Shiite bureaucrats compelled to crawl in their offices like infants. Human rights groups say 43 Shiite mosques and religious structures were destroyed or damaged by a government that contended that it faced an Iranian-inspired plot, without offering any evidence that Tehran played a role. <\/p>\n

Backed by the armed intervention of Saudi Arabia, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa declared martial law in March, and though it was repealed June 1, the reverberations of the repression still echo across the island.\u201cThey told me, \u2018There are two ways we can deal with you \u2014 as a human or as an animal,\u2019 \u201d Matar Matar, 45, recalled being told after he was arrested by men in civilian clothes in May and jailed for three months.”<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.” ...source<\/a><\/p>\n

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Anthony Shadid on Bahrain suffering 16 September, 2011 “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 more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[662],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143"}],"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=3143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}