…source

Bahrain marchers not content with reform proposals

Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets outside Bahrain’s capital to call for greater democratic freedoms despite government plans to introduce some political reforms.

The Associated Press

Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets outside Bahrain’s capital to call for greater democratic freedoms despite government plans to introduce some political reforms.

Friday’s march came a day after Bahrain’s king accepted a list of proposed reforms that include strengthening the power of parliament’s lower house, the country’s only elected body.

The proposals were put forward by a government-sanctioned national dialogue committee. However, its mandate was undercut when the country’s largest Shiite party, Al Wefaq, walked out of the talks, arguing that the government wasn’t committed to real change and dialogue.

Marchers Friday called for a freely elected government and chanted slogans urging the downfall of the monarchy. …source

Protesters reject Bahrain dialogue results
Last Modified: 29 Jul 2011 20:57

Protesters dismissed the results of the national dialogue, with some saying: ”We are Staying” [Reuters]

Tens of thousands have marched outside Bahrain’s capital Manama, protesting against the results of a national dialogue they say has failed to bring real democratic reform in the Gulf island kingdom.

Shouting “We want freedom” and waving Bahraini flags and banners that read “No to dialogue”, protesters marched along Budaiya highway on Friday as helicopters from the security forces buzzed overhead.

Some began to shout “Down, down, Hamad” in the Friday march, which organisers entitled “The people are the source of authority”.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa on Thursday approved parliamentary reforms submitted by a state-appointed body dialogue commission.

The process “reflects the determination [of the participants] to rise above the latest incidents,” King Hamad said in a televised speech on Thursday.

“We have ordered the executive and legislative authorities to take the necessary measures to approve the agreements,” he said after receiving a report by the state-appointed National Dialogue, set up to address grievances after the government crackdown.

The changes grant more powers of scrutiny to the elected lower house of parliament but preserve the dominance of the upper house appointed by the royal elite.

Bahrain’s Sunni rulers launched the formal dialogue in July, aiming to quell international criticism of its crushing of mass pro-democracy protests led by the Shia majority in February and March.

Widespread disapproval

Opposition groups and many in the Shia population argued their voice in the dialogue was overshadowed by a majority of pro-government participants. The government said it had selected representation that accurately reflected society.

Wefaq, the largest Shia opposition group, walked out of the dialogue several weeks ago and now members said they felt their actions were justified after the body’s results were announced.

“The government thought the results were great. We thought they were nothing,” Sayed al-Mousawi, a Wefaq leader, said. “There’s no fully elected government, no reforms to the voting system. It’s a one-sided deal.”

Shia Bahrainis have long complained of discrimination in jobs and services and accuse the government of gerrymandering electoral districts, charges the government denies.

Khalil al-Marzouq, a Wefaq spokesman, said the final proposals vindicated his group’s decision to boycott.

“The reason we pulled out is because of this. The upper house should only be there for consultation,” he said.

The lower house of parliament currently holds limited authority since all the country’s decisions, including the appointment of government ministers, ultimately rest with the king.

Other proposed reforms are aimed at addressing “the need for fairer electoral constituencies”, though the recommendations stopped short of specifically calling for the realigning of electoral districts that members of the opposition say are unfairly drawn.
Click for more of Al Jazeera’s coverage on Bahrain

According to the new proposal, the prime minister, appointed by the king, would have to secure the approval of parliament for members of his government.

“If MPs disapprove they can vote to reject the entire government. Parliament will also have the power to reject the government’s four-year work plan,” it said.

“These reforms guarantee that the government’s composition and work plan will reflect the will of the people.”

It also said cabinet ministers would have to attend some parliament sessions and face questioning in the open chamber rather than within the framework of committees.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman, the prime minister of 40 years, is regarded as a leading figure within the ruling family, who opposes concessions to the opposition.

Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers called in troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in March to help quell protests dominated by the majority Shia community. …more

[cb Editor Note: A credible Investigator does not a credible Investigation make – legitimate recommendation does not justice bring or remove the corruption of State violence. Another spectacle, controlled by a government that negates it own credibility through daily violence against the governed can only be seen as a tactic of delay and a misdirection of justice.

Any investigation bound to events of couple of months puts those events out of context and is blind to brutality and injustice across time that has set the rebellion ablaze. Cherif Bassiouni or anyone who would shun the depth and significance of events to be analyzed because they pale in comparison to the intensity of their personal experience risks being a jurist of relativistic justice and are conducting an exercise in self flattery.

Finally, the al Khalifa regime has time and again demonstrated it’s capacity for inflicting horrendous acts against it’s governed. The construct of investigation easily becomes a front for identification and consolidation of the opposition, those that would be enemies of al Khalifa’s rule. The sham military courts only serve to demonstrate a tyrant that knows no bounds in making a charade of justice.

It is without a doubt that anyone who would throw in with a program from a regime, one who so deviously uses their power to negate human rights, is either totally naive, deceived or complicit. No credible friend or defender of justice with an interest in the defense of human rights would ever allow the remote possibility of the taint of one as repugnant to human rights as the reign of the al Khalifa regime in Bahrain. ]

Selected Article
Bahrain Sets Up Panel To Investigate Unrest
by Kelly McEvers – NPR

Bahrain Sets Up Panel To Investigate Unrest

Bahrain’s government has appointed Cherif Bassiouni to lead an inquiry into events surrounding the protests in February and March, and the crackdown that ensued.

The government of Bahrain has invited a renowned international legal scholar to investigate what went on during mass protests in February and March, and the brutal crackdown on the largely Shiite opposition that ensued. More than 30 people died, hundreds were detained and beaten, and thousands were fired from their jobs.

The commission is headed by Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian-born legal expert who has investigated war crimes and human rights violations in the Balkans, Rwanda, Afghanistan and, most recently, Libya.

Bassiouni and a team of international investigators are taking testimony from both the government and the opposition. The commission will then issue a report and recommendations to Bahrain’s king.

Bassiouni says unlike the 9/11 Commission, which was made up of former politicians, or a U.N. commission that investigates a country whether the ruler likes it or not, the Bahrain commission is different.

“This is a first of its kind in the world,” he says. “That is, for a government to appoint a commission of inquiry but to select the composition of the committee from international personalities and to give it total independence.”

‘A Structural Issue’

Still, the commission is paid by the government of Bahrain. And Bassiouni’s schedule is carefully managed by former government employees.

Already some Bahrainis say they worry Bassiouni might be too close to the government. In an interview, he seemed underwhelmed by the scale of Bahrain’s crackdown, compared with the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, for example.

He recounted one story of a Bahraini opposition figure who was detained.

“He said, ‘They kept repeatedly hitting me, one officer, with the palm of his hand to the back of the head and the back of my neck.’ And I said, ‘Did it leave any marks?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did it cause you any headaches?’ ‘No,'” he says. “You know, I fully recognize that this is demeaning, it’s improper, it’s physical abuse. But this is not like somebody who is engaging in the type of torture that causes severe physical pain.”

Still, Bassiouni says, if members of Bahrain’s security forces are found to have committed torture, he will recommend they be prosecuted. What he says he can’t control is whether these recommendations are heeded or whether those who ordered the torture will ever be known.

He says he hopes the commission will at least serve as a public record — a kind of South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission on paper — that might one day help the disenfranchised Shiite majority of Bahrain reconcile with the country’s Sunni leadership.

At a press conference in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, Khalil al-Marzooq, a leader of the country’s main Shiite opposition group, said by focusing on individual cases of abuse, Bassiouni’s commission won’t get at the larger problems.

“It means more than somebody fired you. It means more than a policeman beat you in the street. It’s more than a policeman tortured you in custody,” he says. “It’s a structural issue.

A structural issue, Marzooq says, that can be fixed only by reforming the political system, not by inviting international legal scholars to clean up Bahrain’s image.

Retaliation Fears

A poem Ayat al-Gormezi read during the protests back in March likens Bahrain’s prime minister to a rat, and says he deserves the same fate as Saddam Hussein, who was hanged.

Gormezi was captured and sent to jail for three and a half months for reading her poems. She says she was beaten so badly she regularly passed out.

Gormezi says she will tell the Bassiouni commission what happened to her, even though she’s afraid the government will try to use it against her someday down the road.

“I do believe it’s my obligation,” she says, “even though I doubt it will do much good.” …source

““What we did was insane and monstrous”, Head of IDF rocket unit, July 2006

Cluster
By Zein El-Amine. Edited by Melissa Tuckey, July 29, 2011

On his last evening
Abu Ali walked home
between the rows of pine
that line his driveway,
settled in the shelter
of his grape arbor, rolled
a cigarette, was served tea
by his wife,
who was preparing
for the expected arrival
of unexpected guests.
He spotted a cluster
above his head
and tugged at it.
The stem snapped,
the concealed cylinder slipped,
its yellow ribbon followed,
fluttered down,
like a ticker tape.
A dull pop was heard.
A flash lit up the arbor –
Abu Ali’s last dispatch
to Marjiyoon’s children.

All throughout that month,
that followed the Summer Rain,
he had gathered
the kids wherever
he found them.
Showed them pictures,
of all the colors
that these things come in –
one next to a cell phone
to give them a sense
of scale. One of a boy,
sitting in a hospital,
seeming to kneel,
seeming to pray.

He held his lectures
under the cover of one tree
or another: under the fig
trees, with their fruit
in red August burst,
or under the sparse shelter
of a fruitless pomegranate.
The people of Marjiyoon
say, that on his last day,
he was seen near the cemetery
sitting in the sprawling shade
of the twisted branches of an olive tree.

…source

US Accuses Iran of ‘Secret Deal’ With al-Qaida
July 29, 2011 – Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration accused Iran on Thursday of entering into a “secret deal” with an al-Qaida offshoot that provides money and recruits for attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Treasury Department designated six members of the unit as terrorists subject to U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. intelligence community has in the past disagreed about the extent of direct links between the Iranian government and al-Qaida. Thursday’s allegations went further than what most analysts had previously said was a murky relationship with limited cooperation.

David S. Cohen, Treasury’s point man for terrorism and financial intelligence, said Iran entered a “secret deal with al-Qaida allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory.” He didn’t provide any details of that agreement, but said the sanctions seek to disrupt al-Qaida’s work in Iraq and deny the terrorist group’s leadership much-needed support.

Click here to find out more!
“Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world today,” Cohen said in a statement. “We are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism.”

Treasury said the exposure of the clandestine agreement would disrupt al-Qaida operations by shedding light on Iran’s role as a “critical transit point” for money and extremists reaching Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“This network serves as the core pipeline through which al-Qaida moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia,” it said.. …more