Activists to track Bahraini rights abuses
17 March, 2012 – Al-Akhbar

Leading human rights activists have established a new website to highlight abuses of power by the Bahraini state.

The website, bahrainwatch.org, tracks and records the government’s promises of reform and highlights when they fail to fulfill them.

Last year the government established the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) to look into allegations of abuse during the crackdown on peaceful protesters in March 2011.

The BICI report made a series of suggestions, including reinstating all those who had been fired for protesting, increasing freedom of speech and establishing an independent commission to monitor the government’s progress.

The government has said it will implement the report but activists responded that it has failed to deliver on many of its promises.

Ala’a Shehabi, one of the site’s creators, said the idea came from frustration with the lack of reform.

“Everyone keeps screaming on about how the government are not doing what they say on Twitter and other places but no one has set up a platform where you go and document these things in a consistent way – one central place where you can get analysis,” she said. …more

Free Ebrahim Sharif
17 March, 2012

Ebrahim Sharif, voice of reason. Ebrahim Sharif is a 53-year old Bahraini politician, businessman, husband, and father — and now, a political prisoner.

He serves as the secretary general of the National Democratic Action Society (also known as Waad), a secular, moderate, and peaceful political opposition group in Bahrain.

At 2 AM, on Thursday, March 17, 2011 Ebrahim was arrested from his home by the Bahrain government. His only crime was calling for genuine democratic reforms in Bahrain.

He was not allowed to contact his family for over a week after his arrest, and even then he was only allowed a few seconds to talk on the phone. His lawyer is called upon by military authorities to attend interrogation sessions only, which has been twice so far since Ebrahim’s arrest. Beyond that there has been no other communication.

To learn more about who Ebrahim Sharif is and why he was arrested, read the about page, and browse through the posts below, which will be updated regularly with new information. Or find out how you can help. …more

The general prosecutor is still involved in hiding the torture of detainees and does not allow their families to meet them till after the disappearance of the effects of torture and the severe beating. Bahrain Center for Human Rights: repression in Bahrain takes new forms and methods and is continuing without stopping through the use of excessive force, torture, sexual harassment and breaking parts of the demonstrators’ bodies.

Bahraini security forces continue to engage in systematic torture in formal detention centers, and others informal
16 March, 2012 – Bahrain Center for Human Rights

Bahrain Center for Human Rights started several months ago and continued until the writing of this report documenting the repression and intimidation adopted by Bahraini security forces and which are of new forms and methods and unjustified in order to spread terror among the citizens who participate in marches and peaceful protests; where they recently proceeded to develop a new way of repression by insulting the victims during their arrest, and taking them to isolated places and torturing them [1]; with the aim of getting them injured as much as possible by breaking parts of their bodies. They also continued breaking into homes early mornings and extracting confessions from detainees under torture exactly as stated in the report of the Bahraini Independent Committee of Inquiry.

Bahrain Center for Human Rights has investigated many incidents of assault, which proved that the detainees were subjected to torture, sexual harassment and severe beating in number of places and buildings owned by Bahraini authorities, and that are not official detention centers or police stations. One of those places is the old municipal building located in Karzakan, to which large number of detainees of that area and the neighboring areas were taken after their arrest.

Most of the detainees who were held in those places have reported that security forces tortured and beaten them severely, causing many of them having serious injuries, fractures and bruises, before transferring them to official detention centers or throwing them in remote areas. Additionally, some of them had been threatened with rape as well as sexual harassment and other forms of insulting treatment, including attacking their religious beliefs. …more

Martyred today in Bahrain, Jafar Jassim from Almiqshaá, Village. Jafar was 41 Years Old Kill by suffcation in Security Forces deliberate and continued misuse of less-than-lethal weapons in a lethal manner.

Bahraini Medics Trial Halted with Fewer than Half of Witnesses Allowed to Testify
15 March, 2012 – Human Rights First – Brenda Bowser-Soder,

Washington, DC — Eighteen of 20 Bahraini medics who were sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison after a military trial finished their latest court appearance today. Human Rights First’s Brian Dooley, who has been in Bahrain for the past week, concluded his trip today by monitoring the trial.

The series of witnesses testifying in defense of the medics made the government case appear even less tenable. Though only fewer than half of the medic’s witnesses were allowed to testify. The judge halted the proceedings shortly after 7:30 p.m.

“The hearing was adjourned until Tuesday, but it appears the defendants will not be able to call any more witnesses to testify in person. These charges should have never been brought and should now be immediately dropped,” said Dooley.

Rula Al Saffar, a Bahraini nurse sentenced to 15 years for providing medical treatment to democracy protesters last spring, told Human Rights First, “It is solely unfair that we were not allowed to call our remaining witnesses, and the judge prevented those witnesses that he did hear from raising the issue of our torture in custody.” …more

Swift boat to Bahrain
By AuthorPaul Mutter – The Arabist – 17 March, 2012

If it looks like an arms deal, walks like an arms deal and quacks like an arms deals, is it an arms deal? The State Department says no:

“Today, officials from the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and State’s Legislative Affairs office briefed select congressional offices about their decision to transfer seven rigid-hull inflatable boats and 12 32-foot Boston Whaler boats from the U.S. Navy in Bahrain to the Bahrain government. Offices briefed ahead of the Friday formal notification included aides to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the offices of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-WY) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), two lawmakers who have been leading the congressional opposition to continued U.S. arms sales to Bahrain.”

“This isn’t a new package or policy decision. This is part of what was briefed to Congress in January. We are still maintaining a pause on most security cooperation for Bahrain pending further progress on reform,” a State Department official told The Cable today. “The transfer of these boats are necessary to protect U.S. naval personnel and assets based in Bahrain. None of these items can be used against protestors. The transfer does not include any arms and the boats are intended for patrol missions, which is critical for ensuring a robust and layered defense of Bahrain’s coast and for enhancing Bahrain’s ability to counter maritime threats to U.S. and coalition vessels.”

The real story out of Bahrain these days, though, is not the gift of some old PT boats, but with the vagaries of the dialogue going on between the pro-government camp and the predominantly Shia opposition groups, increasingly splitting between the leading pro-dialogue al-Wifaq group and younger demonstrators opposed to al-Wifaq’s stance.

According to Justin Gengler, the pro-government camp is starting to list some “reformist” demands of its own:

Once again, then, we hear two separate arguments from members of Bahrain’s Sunni political movements: (1) the state should not negotiate with terrorists; and (2) the state needs to take better care of those who are loyal to it, specifically by clamping down on corruption and other wastes of state resources. As I’ve written previously, whereas the first argument is sure to further complicate the search for a solution to Bahrain’s present political impasse, the second is much more worrisome to the country’s rulers. It implies that Sunnis are beginning to connect the state’s percieved leniency with the opposition with its larger (perceived) neglect of the pro-government faction generally.

In other words, they’re asking the Al Khalifas where are their welfare checks?

Gengler continues:

“It is one thing, in other words, for Sunnis to disagree with the government’s approach in dealing with the opposition; it is another if they begin to suspect that this approach is not simply short-sighted but actually belies a coherent government strategy of checking Sunni ambitions through its dealings with the opposition. Put more bluntly, some Sunnis are beginning to feel duped.”

“Notably, one increasingly-prominent feature of this Sunni movement toward greater political participation and influence is the notion that behind the Bahraini government’s manipulation of citizens is a second, even more sinister puppet-master: the United States.”

Given that the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, and the tepid response of the State Department to the Bahraini protests, this suspicion is already well-founded among the demonstrators, but apparently, it is taking a very nasty turn among Sunni critics of the government thanks to the arrival of some very questionable, anti-American firebrands from Kuwait in their forums. …more

The Rhyme of Time
Bobby Sans

There’s an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend?
It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end.

It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.

It lit fires when fires were not,
And burnt the mind of man,
Tempering leandened hearts to steel,
From the time that time began.

It wept by the waters of Babylon,
And when all men were a loss,
It screeched in writhing agony,
And it hung bleeding from the Cross.

It died in Rome by lion and sword,
And in defiant cruel array,
When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’
Along the Appian Way.

It marched with Wat the Tyler’s poor,
And frightened lord and king,
And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
As e’er a living thing.

It smiled in holy innocence,
Before conquistadors of old,
So meek and tame and unaware,
Of the deathly power of gold.

It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
And stormed the old Bastille,
And marched upon the serpent’s head,
And crushed it ‘neath its heel.

It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
And starved by moons of rain,
Its heart was buried at Wounded Knee,
But it will come to rise again.

It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
As it was knelt upon the ground,
And it died in great defiance,
As they coldly shot it down.

It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.

It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing ‘cross the skies.

It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
The thought that says ‘I’m right!’