DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Ten years after protesters gathered in Bahrain’s capital in 2011 to call for the demise of their government, authorities continue to suppress all signs of dissent. Activists behind those turbulent days say the memory of the protests that threatened the Sunni monarchy’s hold on power has been all but extinguished.
But many live with the consequences.
“That was the beginning of the dark age,” said Jawad Fairooz, an exiled former leader of the now banned Shia political party Al-Wefaq, who was deprived of his nationality for his political work in 2012.
While many activists and protesters have escaped or been imprisoned in exile, the threat of dissent remains in this small, majority-Shia-populated kingdom off the east coast of Saudi Arabia.
Unlike neighboring Arabian monarchies in the Gulf, Bahrain has plagued low unrest in recent years. Police have been active on the city streets for the past week, residents say, and they are not at risk of renewed demonstrations.
A website for the Bahraini Independent Commission of Inquiry, commissioned by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who had hosted an independent report on the 2011 protests and the government crackdown that ended these protests, mysteriously went offline before this Thursday was restored. The government described it as a “technical failure” without elaborating further.
For weeks beginning on February 14, 2011, thousands of streets thronged in Bahrain, encouraged and stimulated by pro-democracy protests that stirred in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. The protests in Bahrain were primarily staged by the country’s Shias seeking greater political rights in the Persian Gulf state, a major Western ally and home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
“It was overwhelming,” recalls Nazeeha Saeed, then a reporter for a French TV news channel who described the intoxicating days in Pearl Roundabout, the symbolic center of the capital Manama, which was later bulldozed by authorities. ‘I had never seen anything like it. People forgot that we were a kingdom in the Persian Gulf backed by powerful monarchies. “
Soon, said Saeed, things went terribly wrong. Security forces tried to disperse the sit-in and responded to protests with deluge of tear gas, rubber bullets, and in some cases, live fire. Police shot a protester 20 meters ahead of her in the head. She said she was being held and beaten for telling foreign journalists what she saw.
Now in exile in Berlin, Saeed said she cannot return home. Bahrain fined her $ 2,650 in 2017 for working with a government-issued press cardAt the same time, the government declined to accredit two Associated Press journalists and has since had tightly controlled visas to report to the island.
As violence escalated in February 2011, demonstrations turned into a popular movement crossing sectarian lines. Calls for constitutional reform turned into demands for the dismantling of the country’s political structure. The monarchy turned to nearby Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for help, inviting foreign troops to quell the protests.
After the crackdown, King Hamad ordered an internationally recognized commission of lawyers and scholars under the late Professor Cherif Bassiouni to investigate. The resulting 500-page report, based on more than 5,100 interviews with protesters and residents, describes prisons riddled with torture, dozens of arbitrary arrests, and the extraction of forced confessions against those caught in the trawl. Inmates, it reported, were beaten and forced to kiss photos of the king and prime minister.
A decade later, activists in Bahrain and in exile say their country is far less free than it was in 2011. By portraying criticism of his rule as an Iranian plot to undermine the country, the government has accelerated the crackdown. Bahrain blamed Iran for fueling the protests in 2011, although the report by Bassiouni and other experts found no evidence of this.
Tehran denies interference in Bahrain although weapons seized on island have been linked back to IranEven Iran under the former Shah tried to claim Bahrain as part of its territory.
In the run-up to the anniversary of the events in 2011, Bahraini officials have not responded to repeated requests from The Associated Press for comment.
Since 2011, the authorities have targeted not only Shia political groups and religious leaders, but also human rights activists, journalists and online opponents. Mass processes have become commonplace. Political parties have been dismantled. Independent news gathering on the island has become almost impossible. Meanwhile, sporadic low-level attacks against police and other targets by Shia militant groups have occurred.
Even a tweet can land a person in jail, despite Bahrain’s constitution that guarantees the freedom of expression of its citizens. Nabeel Rajab, one of the most prominent leaders of the 2011 protests, was only released into house arrest last year over the coronavirus pandemic after serving years of internationally criticized jail time.
When the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the country last March, the government announced it had arrested more than 40 people for spreading rumors about the virus and “disrupting public security.” And last fall, activists say, authorities scoured the internet for dissent following the death of long-serving Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa. One of the main demands made by protesters in 2011 was that Prince Khalifa resign and be tried for corruption and human rights violations.
A Bahraini man, a former journalist who refused to be identified for fear of reprisals, said he was jailed for two weeks after posting a Quranic verse on social media that security forces suggested welcoming the prime minister’s death. . One detainee in the same cell had posted politically charged poetry, while another simply tweeted the words ‘good morning’, he claimed.
“We’ve only gotten worse since 2011,” said the 47-year-old. “Now, the only meaning of ‘opposition’ in Bahrain is to try to document the arrests of your friends.”
Follow Isabel DeBre on Twitter at www.twitter.com/isabeldebre.