{"id":8871,"date":"2012-04-18T08:11:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T15:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8871"},"modified":"2012-04-18T08:11:57","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T15:11:57","slug":"no-formula-one-over-our-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8871","title":{"rendered":"“No Formula One over our blood”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bahrain Grand Prix 2012: ‘no Formula One over our blood’ cry protesters ahead of weekend’s race<\/strong>
\n18 April, 2012 – Bahrain Freedom Movement<\/p>\n

They poured past in their thousands: men of all ages, chattering children, women dressed head to toe in black abayas, many of them holding placards, all of them chanting slogans. You did not need to be able to speak Arabic to get the gist of what they were saying: \u201cDown with King Hamad\u201d mostly. That and: \u201cNo Formula One in Bahrain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every so often a protester would peel off from the crowd and shake the hands of visiting journalists, thanking us for being there in person and imploring us to help them get their message out.<\/p>\n

We had been told to see with our own eyes what the situation was in Bahrain. So there we were; at a protest march in Al Dair, a small Shi\u2019ite village north east of Manama, near the airport. It was the largest of several such protests yesterday.<\/p>\n

This was the acceptable face of the opposition. While tear gas was used to disperse protesters armed with Molotov cocktails during Monday\u2019s march in Salmabad, yesterday\u2019s in Al Dair was peaceful, almost joyful.<\/p>\n

But there was an edge. Rubber bullets, remnants from previous clashes, lay scattered about. A 13-year-old girl, Reem, whose father was killed in police custody last year \u2013 allegedly beaten to death \u2013 came up to introduce herself. She was with her uncle, a politician in Bahrain\u2019s main opposition party, Al Wefaq, which has called for seven days of protest to capitalise on the presence of F1.<\/p>\n

Our guide for the day, Dr Ala\u2019a Shehabi, an activist who met with F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone in London earlier this year in an effort to have the race cancelled, told us about some of the other faces in the crowd; a nurse, Rola Alsaffar, who was allegedly beaten by police last spring after helping to treat injured protesters; a doctor, Huda Alawi, whose husband is a prominent local lawyer representing hundreds of protesters in jail.
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\nWith the grand prix coming up this weekend, she told us, many activists had been rounded up in the past few days. One of her colleagues, a 19-year-old student, told us he had slept in three different houses over the past three nights after the police had come looking for him.<\/p>\n

In Al Dair, the police kept their distance and everyone headed off after an hour or so to answer the call for evening prayer.<\/p>\n

One man, who was wearing a red Ferrari polo shirt, approached us. \u201cI love F1,\u201d he said. \u201cBut not over our blood. They are forcing it on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had heard much the same thing from my taxi driver after landing in Bahrain yesterday. On our way into town, which, as we were assured it would be by Bahrain\u2019s authorities, was ghostlike, he gave me his thoughts on Sunday\u2019s race. \u201cI have two emotions,\u201d he said. \u201cOne is that I am proud to have such a big event in Bahrain. But the other part of me feels shame. You will be welcome here because you are guests in my country but you will be racing over blood this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if the race was not vital to the economy, he insisted that the average Bahraini would see little of the $400-500\u2009million which the Bahrain GP organisers estimate it generates. \u201cThe government and their supporters own all these buildings,\u201d he said, sweeping his hand in a wide arc to indicate the smart hotels of the diplomatic quarter. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Bahrain Grand Prix 2012: ‘no Formula One over our blood’ cry protesters ahead of weekend’s race 18 April, 2012 – Bahrain Freedom Movement They poured past in their thousands: men of all ages, chattering children, women dressed head to toe in black abayas, many of them holding placards, all of them chanting slogans. You did 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":[2306],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8871"}],"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=8871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8872,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8871\/revisions\/8872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}