After more than a year of harsh repression and violence in Bahrain, the Sunni dictatorship’s response to the youth’s protest movement is still generating a “human rights crisis,” according to Amnesty International.
Despite the regime’s claims of reform following international condemnation of their brutality, Amnesty warns “no one should be under any illusions that the country’s human rights crisis is over.”
“The authorities are trying to portray the country as being on the road to reform but we continue to receive reports of torture and use of unnecessary and excessive force against protests,” said Amnesty’s Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.
Shiite Bahrainis – who make up about 70 percent of the population in the Gulf monarchy ruled by Sunnis – have been protesting for democratic reforms for over a year. The regime’s response was initially bloody, killing dozens of unarmed protesters in February 2011 when security forces shot at them with live rounds.
Since then, and after considerable international pressure, the government response has been relegated to tear gas, severe beatings, systematic torture, and widespread repression and intimidation. And the protest movement has maintained its strength, resorting to Molotov cocktails, rock-throwing, and attempted attacks on police.
Amnesty’s report documents the torture of an 18-year-old student, Hassan ‘Oun, who was arrested in January and the deaths of a 14-year-old boy and an 81-year-old woman after tear gas was fired into their homes.
But the Obama administration has been supportive of the regime’s stubborn repression throughout. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and is considered by Washington as a geopolitical asset in the strategically important Persian Gulf, also serving as a bulwark against Shiite Iran.
Over $92 million in aid has been sent since Obama’s inauguration and another $22.4 million slated for 2012 and 2013. The Obama administration has quietly moved forward with a new package of arms sales to the regime in Bahrain, after international pressure forced them to delay its planned $53 million arms sale. Using legal loopholes, they moved forward with the new sales without notifying the public.
"Amnesty warns “no one should be under any illusions that the country’s human rights crisis is over.”
when and if there is a single social reform in Saudi Arabia, then there is a reform in Bahrain. When and if there is a government (if such thing exist as a government exist in any of these tyrannies regime) reform, then there is reform about human rights in any of these countries. Look: there is no such thing as government in any of these countries, they are related to the Kings and cousin Kings and uncle king running the country calling it government , there is no elections, nor for that matter people have the right to vote, government, governors, judges are hand picked and preselected from and by the cousin kingdom and his family, when and if such matter resolved then there is going to be a reform. Until then is the job for US and a political need to keep and feed these dictatorial regimes hoping for something to come out of all that mess US-EU is making.
There have been pledges before, but no reform.
The only country with its regimes that is not, again that is not basing their finding on the facts and therefore starting or going to war is US and England, now they have found their fundamental path by using Saudis and UAE to continue with their atrocities and war crimes around the world. 72% of people in middle east see US and Israel as their #1 enemy, one million Palestinians are prisoned within their country, all social options are closed to them by the Israelis Zionism government, they simply refuse the Palestinians right of any kind, they have billet the “Prison Wall – Berlin Wall” dividing, restricting and above all isolating people from anything and everything that is belongs to them, the Zionism simply doing exactly the same as Hitler was doing to radical, against Hitlerism Jewish people. This is 2012 America, weak up your enemy is not Palestinians, nor the people of middle east it is your policies that making all the enemy in the world to be your enemy, show your good side and tell Israel that its fascist regime need to obey the human rights, that Israel needs to demolish its apartheid attitude toward nations in the region, simply start a notion at UN for boycotting Israel, then you will see the changes. The argument that you need to change any other regime in middle east is an old one, start with yourself, then tell Saudis and UAE to start changing for a democratic changes, until then US – England and EU will continue wit their endless wars.
So what? It's not as if the Empire is going to let something petty and insignificant as this get in the way of their ambitions. Besides, the bigger the human rights crisis, the more profit from the sale of weapons they stand to make.