Bahrain: Pressures mounts against the regime
The plight of one woman could have significant impact on thousands of dispossessed families in Bahrain. Safiyya Ahmad Ali, 36, from the town of Dair in Muharraq, has been living on the street for the past ten days, with no decent lodging.
The notorious prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, has been boasting of his new skyscraper which will host the newly-established Bahrain Financial Harbour. Yet he has failed to provide decent accommodation to thousands of families. He is not alone in this. The ruler who is his nephew, has put his hands on vast areas of the seashores, reclaiming sealand plundering people’s money in the process. His son, the crown prince, has collected millions of dinars in loyalties from henchmen for reclaiming more sealand. In the process, the environment has suffered immensely, with coral reefs suffering total destruction in large areas. Yet, the world is led to believe that despotic Al Khalifa ruling family is the solution to Bahrain ills. Safiyya Ali started her picket outside the ministry of housing earlier in the month, accompanied by her 10-years old daughter, Maryam, but she feared for her life as the temperatures soared to the high forties. The child was subsequently lodged with her relatives.
Meanwhile, the people were shocked to see foreign mercenaries painting over patriotic slogans in several areas, including Al Eker. Anti-regime activists have adopted peaceful means to express their anti-regime views on the wall of these towns and repeated their call for the dismissal of the prime minister who has been accused of committing serious crimes including torture, extra-judicial killing and the plundering of the country’s wealth. The people feel utter disgust at the granting of a special reward by the UN Human Settlements programme while thousands remain homeless. It has now transpired that Sheikh Khalifa had given the programme one million dollars as a “gift” only one month prior to receiving the “reward”.
International Human Rights organizations have been appalled by this reward. Human Rights Watch considered it a wrong act that would send the wrong message to the tyrants and oppressors.
The downturn in the public service sectors has been accompanied with sharp rises in human rights violations. As the people of Sanabis were preparing for the 12th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saeed Al Iskafi who was brutally murdered by torturers on 8th July 1995, foreign mercenaries were seen in the past two days tearing off Saeed’s images from the walls. His mutilated body was handed to his father few days after his arrest. He was a young boy, full of activism and hope. His killers, including Khalid Al Wazzan, have since remained under the protection of Sheikh Hamad, the ruler, who, in 2002, issued the notorious law 56 that shelters torturers.
Sheik Hamad has been enraged by the Bahraini human rights activists who have campaign for the repeal of this notorious law. He is reported to have ordered the employment of heavy-handed policies against the Bahraini activists. In the past few days, one of the activists, Nabeel Rajab, has been pursued by unmarked cars belonging to the notorious intelligence system. Plain-clothed torturers have been following him at every corner he turns. Calls have been made, once more, to the UN and other agencies to intervene to protect human rights activists, especially Nabeel Rajab, a senior official at the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
At another level, reports from within the ruling family circles have indicated unease among its senior figures after the publishing of an article on 7th July in the Los Angeles Times. The article, written by Borzou Daragahi, and titled “Strategic rift in Bahrain’s royal court”. It said”: One faction believes in reconciliation with the Persian Gulf nation’s disenfranchised Shiite Muslim majority. The other believes in suppressing Shiite aspirations, even if it means supporting Sunni groups propelled by the same ideologies that inspire Osama bin Laden”.
Bahrain Freedom Movement
10/07/2007