irishtimes.com – Last Updated: Tuesday, June 7, 2011, 12:15
Arrests over Bahrain protests

Bahraini police arrested a number of Shias at the weekend for shouting anti-government slogans during a religious festival in the Gulf Arab state, the interior ministry said today.

Police clashed with Shia marchers on Sunday, less than a week after the kingdom, ruled by its Sunni Muslim minority, repealed an emergency law that quashed weeks of protests.

“Some small groups broke the law on Sunday by exploiting the commemoration of the death of the Imam Hadi to stage marches and repeat political slogans that violate [the law],” the official news agency quoted spokesman Tareq bin Dayna as saying.

“A number of those provoking disturbances were arrested … and have been transferred to public prosecution.”

Residents and leading Shia opposition group Wefaq said on Sunday that police used tear gas, rubber bullets, sound grenades and birdshot to break up marches in several Shia villages around the capital Manama.

Marchers in some of the parades shouted “Down, down (King) Hamad” and “The people want the fall of the regime.” Some of the gatherings were purely religious, residents said. …more

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
June 07, 2011
Readout of the President’s Meeting With His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain

The President met today and had a productive discussion with His Highness Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of Bahrain, following the Crown Prince’s meeting with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. The President reaffirmed the strong commitment of the United States to Bahrain. He welcomed King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s decision to end the State of National Safety early and the announcement that the national dialogue on reform would begin in July. He also expressed strong support for the Crown Prince’s ongoing efforts to initiate the national dialogue and said that both the opposition and the government must compromise to forge a just future for all Bahrainis. To create the conditions for a successful dialogue, the President emphasized the importance of following through on the government’s commitment to ensuring that those responsible for human rights abuses will be held accountable. The President noted that, as a long-standing partner of Bahrain, the United States believes that the stability of Bahrain depends upon respect for the universal rights of the people of Bahrain, including the right to free speech and peaceful assembly, and a process of meaningful reform that is responsive to the aspirations of all. …source

Islamic-World
Bahrain medical staff ‘tortured for confessions’
Tuesday, 7 June 2011

Bahrain, June 07: Doctors and nurses put on trial in Bahrain yesterday told relatives they were beaten with hoses and wooden boards embedded with nails and made to eat faeces. They also had to stand without moving for hours, or even days, and were deprived of sleep in order to force them to sign false confessions.

The Bahraini authorities have put on trial 47 doctors and nurses before a security tribunal, accusing them of trying to overthrow the government, though they say all they did was treat injured pro-democracy protesters. Relatives of the health workers, who were allowed to speak to them for 10 minutes after the hearing, said the accused alleged that they had been psychologically and physically abused during their confinement.

One eyewitness said the health workers said the worst “forms of torture were during the interrogation in the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) in Adiya. But at the jail it was mainly humiliation and constant verbal abuse with the occasional beatings, however not as severe and extreme as at the CID.”

The trial is a sign that the end of martial law on 1 June has had no effect on the government’s repression of the majority Shia community. The court trying the health workers, most of whom worked at the Salmaniya Medical Complex, has military prosecutors and military and civilian judges, suggesting the end to martial law may have been a ploy ahead of Formula One’s decision to stage the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Before the hearing yesterday, families of the doctors and nurses had only been able to communicate by phone. Lawyers had not seen their clients at all. Eyewitnesses said the appearance of the doctors confirmed fears of abuse. A witness told The Independent: “They were blindfolded and handcuffed and these were only removed when the [court] session began.” The witness asked for their name to be withheld. …more

Mosley writes off Bahrain chances
Author: Nigel Brown
Posted on:07 June 2011 – 01:50 PM

Former FIA president Max Mosley has written off the chances of the reinstated Bahrain Grand Prix actually going ahead.

The race had originally been scheduled as the season opener on March 13 but was postponed in February because of civil unrest in Bahrain.

The sport’s governing body unanimously agreed to restore the race to the calendar on October 30, with the inaugural Indian Grand Prix moved back to December 11.

Mosley believes Formula One’s image will be damaged if the race goes ahead, while also adding that there needs to be unanimous agreement from the teams, who have already expressed their dissatisfaction against the season finishing as late as December.

Mosley told BBC Radio 5 live: “I will be astonished if the event goes ahead. I don’t think it will happen.

“One thing that everybody seems to have overlooked is that the teams have to agree a change of calendar.

“You can’t simply move the Indian race from one point to another without asking all the people who have entered.

“You need the written agreement of every team and I don’t believe that is going to be forthcoming.” …source

(AP) WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has met with the crown prince of Bahrain at the White House and is welcoming the Gulf kingdom’s decision to end emergency law last week.

In a statement, the White House says Obama told Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa that stability in Bahrain depends on respect for the universal rights of citizens there, including the right to free speech and peaceful assembly. He also reaffirmed America’s strong commitment to Bahrain.

Bahrain imposed emergency rule in mid-March, giving the military wide powers to suppress demonstrations led by the country’s Shiite majority against the minority Sunni rulers. Bahrain invited 1,500 troops from a Saudi-led Gulf force to help suppress the unrest when emergency rule was imposed. Those troops will remain in Bahrain indefinitely. …source

Spain: Wellsprings of an explosive movement
Sunday, June 5, 2011
By Dick Nichols, Barcelona
Protest camp in Madrid, May 19.

In late April, the progressive Spanish daily Publico asked why there was so little resistance to the economic crisis, despite the country’s 5 million jobless and rising misery.

The union and social movement leaders and left academics interviewed pointed to the numbing impact of mass unemployment, the casualisation of work, the bureaucratisation of organised labour, widespread scepticism that striking could achieve anything, and the economic cushion provided by Spain’s extended families.

They also cited the apparent failure of French and Greek general strikes against austerity.

The consensus was that, given the absence in Europe of even one successful struggle, people in Spain were resigned to battling their way through the crisis as best they could.

No-one sensed the new wave of struggle just over the horizon.

Just over one month later, camps of thousands of los indiganados (“the outraged”) are pitched in the squares of at least 80 Spanish cities and towns.

The eyes of the world are on Mardid’s Puerta del Sol and Barcelona’s Plaza Catalonia, where the occupiers are denouncing pro-corporate austerity, political corruption and demanding a “new system”. …more

The Return of the Zapatistas? They Never Left
May 2011 – Written by Michael McCaughan

San Cristobal de las Casas
Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Mexico is caught in the grip of an escalating drug war which has cost 40,000 lives in the past five years and has no end in sight. By comparison, the Zapatista uprising in January 1994, with less than 200 casualties, prompted peace rallies, a speedy ceasefire, and a national dialogue. The body count varies from day to day, 29, 41 or 33, numbers and methods varying as decapitation and mutilation complete with asphyxiation and the traditional bullet in the head. This endless war of unimaginable cruelty has numbed most Mexicans who observe from afar and hope the river of blood doesn’t arrive at their doorstep.

Once in a while, however, a single incident can trigger a powerful reaction. The death of Juan Francisco Sicilia, one of seven people gunned down in march, sparked a national mobilisation and a new movement aimed at shifting government policy away from perpetual warfare and toward an integrated political solution to the conflict. Javier Sicilia, poet and father of Juan Francisco, launched ‘The March for Peace with Justice and Dignity’ this month, a three-day event which culminated in a rally in Mexico City. The idea was simple: a silent march and a single slogan, ‘Estamos hasta la madre – no mas sangre’ (‘We’ve had it up to here, no more bloodshed’). This idea captured the popular imagination and on Sunday, May 8, hundreds of thousands of people marched all over Mexico demanding a radical change to government policy.

In Chiapas, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) answered the call and issued a communique in which they announced their plan to march into San Cristobal de las Casas, the town where the Zapatistas first appeared in January 1994. It has been five years since the Zapatistas last mobilised in this manner and for many people the movement has become a fading memory, a noble insurrection which inspired millions but ultimately fizzled out; victims of a sterile and bitter debate over the pitfalls and possibilities of electoral politics. …more

Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off in cyberspace
Posted on June 7, 2011 by deterritorialsupportgroup

In February the Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason very succinctly laid out the radically different nature of recent popular uprisings across North Africa, the Middle East and Europe compared to earlier political movements, and the economic and sociological reasons behind it. This incisive blogpost rang true for many of those involved in those social movements, articulating, as it did, a new sentiment and new political priorities amongst those populations. The short article sketched out a more cohesive image which the media in general was missing, partly through structural failings, but largely because events were unfolding at speed and trying to drag the chaotic events into an understandable analysis was difficult.

Running alongside the (still unfolding) Arab Spring, informing and shaping and being shaped in turn by those events, was a developing online conflict with major similarities; young, optimistic graduates who saw societies in more generalised terms of “power”, highly networked, informal and decentralised decision making processes and a deep cynicism and mistrust of traditional power elites and political ideologies. In the last month especially we’ve seen a series of events and developments that are changing the game of cyber-war (and cyber-class-war).

So what’s going on in cyberspace? What we’re seeing is a significant escalation in serious geo-political combat, and the mainstream press has failed in it’s coverage so far. Perhaps years of rehashing press releases have left many hacks without the critical journalistic capabilities to monitor, study, explain and contextualise the recent events of the cyber-war, leaving the majority of the populace completely in the dark as to what’s happening, and how governments and (unelected) transnational organisations are investing significant resources in an attempt to limit online freedoms.

Make no mistake- this is not a minor struggle between state nerds and rogue geeks- this is the battlefield of the 21st Century, with the terms and conditions of war being configured before our very eyes. Given the significant economic disruption online activism and hacking can cause, and the power online tools have to agitate, plan and execute IRL activism, the current increase in tensions between hackers and the capital/state partnership is every bit as significant as the continuing developments of the Arab Spring, with which the online activist movements are inextricably linked. Below we have laid out a brief overview of recent events. This list is necessarily partial, given the complexity, history and depth of the situation, and we are by no means experts in the field; we would recommend people use it as a jumping off point to help get more educated (we have heavily hyperlinked the text FYI). Get googling.

1. At the heart of it is a newly politicised generation of hackers who have moved from a lulz-based psychic-economy to an engaged, socially-aware and politically active attitude towards world events, primarily as a reaction to the way governments and multinationals dealt with the fallout of Wikileaks. The “politicisation of 4chan” and the birth of Anonymous have set the stage for a practice of socially-engaged hacktivism of a form and scale we’ve not seen before. …more

Bahrain protests and Obama’s ‘drop by’ diplomacy

President Obama just happened to ‘drop by’ a White House meeting with Bahrain’s crown prince today even as the government brutally suppresses protests. Why the secrecy?

The small kingdom is home to America’s Fifth Fleet and is of particular concern to Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, which regards the majority-Shiite protests in Bahrain as a proxy battle with Iran. Yet the government crackdown has been particularly brutal, even targeting women for torture.

No wonder then that Mr. Obama had to hide his meeting today with the Bahraini crown prince.

The president didn’t have the meeting on the official White House schedule. Yet he was able to “drop by” the office of National Security Advisor Tom Donilon just about the time a meeting began with Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.

The crown prince is regarded as the lonely reformer in Bahrain’s ruling family, worthy of consulting but not in a visible way that might confuse people that the US condones the crackdown. His great-uncle, Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman, is the conservative – and brutal – one, defending the country’s minority Sunni elite against the pro-democracy rabble with an iron fist. He might also have the power to boot out the US Naval base.

“Drop by” meetings are often used by presidents to send or receive messages in situations that need delicate diplomacy. The Dalai Lama, for example, gets such treatment, so as not to offend China by holding an official, cameras-clicking meeting.

Prince Salman is a graduate of American University in Washington, and thus may have an appreciation for the human-rights concerns of the US over Bahrain’s violence. Perhaps he might even take back a tough message from Obama that reform must come quickly and an end to violence even more quickly. …source

Two more journalists summoned by military court
Published on Monday 6 June 2011.
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Hossam Al-Suwaifi, a reporter for the newspaper Al-Wafd, and Sayyid Abdel Ati, the editor of the newspaper’s weekly edition, were questioned by the military prosecutor’s office on 3 June about a 26 May article referring to a possible pact between the armed forces and the Muslim Brotherhood.

They are the latest in a series of journalists to be summoned for interrogation by military prosecutors. Reporters Without Borders wrote to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces on 1 June voicing concern that such interrogations were becoming increasingly systematic (see below).

3.06.2011 – Military rulers urged to allow freedom of expression

Reporters Without Borders called today on Egypt’s military regime to stop the “threats, arrests, interrogations and physical violence” it said the country’s journalists and bloggers had been subjected to in the months since the revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.

The organisation said it feared that a media forum the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has convened on 5 June with the main political groupings and leading media figures taking part, would be used by the army to “dodge criticism of recent abuses for which it is heavily responsible.” It called on the Council to listen to the demands at the forum for media freedom and show new respect for the work of journalists. The Council says civil society organisations can submit their demands by fax. …source

Nasrallah: U.S. keen to hijack Arab revolts
June 07, 2011 01:57 AM
By Hussein Dakroub
The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused the United States Monday of seeking to hijack the wave of pro-democracy popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world.

He also praised Palestinians who confronted Israeli troops on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights despite knowing they would be fired upon.
Damascus said 23 people had been killed Sunday when Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators who tried to push through the mined cease-fire line across Syria’s frontier with the Golan Heights. The protesters rallied on the Syrian side of the border with the Golan to mark the Naksa, which refers to the defeat of Arab armies in the June 5, 1967, Middle East war which resulted in Israel capturing Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Israeli troops killed more than a dozen people along the Lebanese and Syrian borders on May 15 when Palestinian protesters gathered near the border with Israel to commemorate the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, marking the 63rd anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.

In a televised speech addressing the opening session of an intellectual conference on Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei in Beirut, Nasrallah said: “We hold the Palestinians and those youths who rallied at the border of Syria’s occupied Golan Heights in high esteem and respect for their insistence on confrontation in a clear message of determination in this [Arab] nation.”

“What happened yesterday on the anniversary of the Naksa on the Golan Heights has revealed that the U.S. administration wants to hijack the Arab revolutions,” Nasrallah said.

“This event has confirmed Washington’s absolute commitment to Israel’s security. This is Washington which talks about human rights and freedoms,” he added, referring to U.S. officials’ statements that Israel has the right to defend itself against protesters who attempt to cross its border. …more

Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Rupert Colville
Location: Geneva

BAHRAIN

The High Commissioner would like to make clear that a meeting she had last Friday with Bahrain’s Minister of Social Development and acting health minister, Dr Fatima bint Mohammed Al Balooshi and three other Bahrain government officials, has been grossly misrepresented in a report by the Bahrain News Agency. The BNA article was subsequently picked up by a number of newspapers in the region, including the Khaleej Times and the Gulf Daily News, and even by some Sri Lankan government officials and media for their own purposes.

The Bahrain News Agency, which was not present at the meeting, stated that the High Commissioner had “recognized misinformation” about the Kingdom of Bahrain, and quoted her as saying “Certain information which we received about the developments in Bahrain are untrue.”

The High Commissioner would like to stress that she made no such statement, and is disturbed by this blatant distortion of her words. She will formally request the Government officials who attended the meeting to issue a correction.

The discussions at the meeting with the Bahraini Government delegation focused mainly on the proposed OHCHR mission to Bahrain, as well as a number of other issues relating to the recent protests, including the need for transparent independent investigations into the human rights violations that have taken place there. The mission has been accepted in principle by the Bahraini government but no dates have yet been set. …source