Bahrain police attack protesters with stun grenades, chemical gas

Bahrain riot police fire tear gas, stun grenades on protesters
3 August, 2012 – RT

Published: 03 August, 2012, 14:58
Bahraini policemen arrest protestors during an anti-government demonstration in the village of Bani Jamrah, West of Manama, on August 2, 2012 (AFP Photo / Mohammed Al-Shaikh)

Bahraini policemen arrest protestors during an anti-government demonstration in the village of Bani Jamrah, West of Manama, on August 2, 2012 (AFP Photo / Mohammed Al-Shaikh)

TAGS: Arms, Conflict, Middle East, Protest, Politics, Human rights, Opposition, Police

Bahraini riot police have fired tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of demonstrators attempting to block a highway. Frequent antigovernment protests have wracked the country since February 2011.

Protesters and police clashed in several Shiite villages late Thursday and early Friday, witnesses told AFP. The recent protests are a move by Bahrain’s opposition to spark further street demonstrations in the country.

The ongoing uprising by the country’s Shiite majority, which claims systematic discrimination on the part of Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, has weakened after multiple mass arrests. At least 50 people have been killed and many more detained since protests began 18 months ago.

Advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights released a new report this month titled ‘Weaponizing Tear Gas,’ which accused Bahraini authorities of badly injuring and even killing protesters with tear gas by flooding enclosed spaces like cars and houses with the toxic chemicals.

The report stated that government officials misused tear gas against Shiite Muslim civilians, and that the attacks caused severe suffering amounting to torture. The report concluded that Bahraini authorities had “routinely violated every UN principle governing police use of force.”

The EU and US have made few statements and taken no direct action against the Bahraini government’s crackdown on the uprisings.

Richard Sollom, Deputy Director of Physicians for Human Rights and author of the report, noted that the report would likely not be well-received by the Obama administration, which has refrained from criticizing the Bahraini government, he said in an interview with New York Times.

Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf and is a strategic check against Iran.

The Bahraini government did not respond to the group’s request for an account of the exact types of tear gas used by the police, Sollom said. It also refused to reveal where it is obtaining the tear gas, although canisters recovered on the street by activists suggest that they were manufactured in the US, France and Brazil. …more