Bahrain: One martyr as world starts to respond to victims cries and awaits Day of Tamarrud

A citizen was martyred on Sunday 14th July as a result of inhaling excessive amounts of chemical gases used by regime’s forces. Hajj Saeed Abdulla Al Marzooq, 55, from Duraz Town was in an area which was bombarded with large amounts of killer gases to subdue the people who seek political change in the country. He collapsed and his life could not be saved as the gases had managed to destroy his internal organs.

In continuation of the repressive policies and terrorizing tactics, several Bahrainis have been kidnapped by members of regime’s Death Squads.  Two youth from the town of Al Ma’amir were snatched by those forces and nothing has yet been disclosed about their well being or their whereabouts. On Tuesday 16th July, Abdulla Al Qassas and Mohammad Eid were taken to an unknown location by members of Death Squads. One week earlier, Dhaif Abdul Nabi was also kidnapped by those forces from his home town of Sitra. Sayed Saeed, the father of one of the young martyrs, Sayed Hashim (martyred January 2012) from Sitra has also been abducted. The people of Sitra staged several protests demanding his release or disclosing his whereabouts, but the Alkhalifa have refused.  

On Wednesday night, 17th July, a gas cylinder placed in a car at a mosque car park exploded causing loud noise in the vicinity. The regime was the first to announce it and blamed the opposition for it. But its claim was ridiculed by the opposition many of whom believe that the regime had planned this incident to justify more crackdown against the people of Bahrain. The cylinder was allegedly placed near a Sunni mosque where people were attending prayers. It was clear from the moment of the explosion that the aim was to create the atmosphere for more sectarian strife after it had become clear that both Shia and Sunni Bahrainis were calling for serious political reforms. Two weeks ago a Sunni Muslim group presented a set of steps that would see the longest serving prime minister in the world, go unceremoniously. The Alkhalifa have all along been worried by the revival of a nation-wide awareness that could culminate in collective challenge to Alkhalifa hereditary dictatorship. T he explosion is clearly meant to forestall any attempt of political reconciliation between the two major components of the Bahraini society; the Shia and Sunni Muslims. As the opposition condemned the dirty plot by Alkhalifa, it also challenged the dictator to stop killing Bahrainis, and bring to trial torturers and abusers.

On Monday 15th July The Times newspaper published a story titled “Bahrain; torture double standard”. It said: “Britain has been accused of operating “double standards” for turning a blind eye to human rights violations in Bahrain, while taking a much tougher stance with some other countries in the region. Nazeeha Saeed, a Bahraini journalist who was detained and tortured by her own Government, said that it was time the international community took stock of the human rights abuses going on there. The article added: “People think that the UK and the international community have been soft regarding violations of human rights and of freedom of speech …They say that they are ‘concerned’ about what’s going on but they don’t help the people there get justice. It’s double standards,” she said.

On Tuesday 16th July the Washington-based CATO Institute published an article on its website by Ted Gallen Carpenter titled “Bahrain Emerging as Washington’s Next Middle East Crisis”. It said: “The Obama administration, already preoccupied with the unpleasant developments in Syria and Egypt, may soon be facing a new crisis in the small Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain.  If violence in that country continues to grow, it will have a more immediate and significant impact on Washington’s role in the region…   There is little doubt that Bahrain’s political environment is increasingly volatile.  The country is on the front lines of the Sunni-Shiite struggle for dominance in the Middle East.  The Sunni monarchy of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa rules a population that is nearly 70 percent Shiite, and stark discrimination against the latter is evident in nearly every aspect of life. It further added: “Despite that crackdown, though, insurgents might well have toppled the monarchy if Saudi  Arabia and its Gulf allies had not intervened with 2,000 troops in March 2011.”  The article quoted Frederic Wehrey, a scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who noted in his important study on Bahrain that “the United States finds itself in the undesirable position of maintaining close ties with a repressive regime that has skillfully avoided meaningful reforms… .”

Bahrain Freedom Movement
19th July 2103