Open Letter to UK FCO Minister Lord Howell on Bahrain and the “Arab Spring”

Open Letter to UK FCO Minister Lord Howell on Bahrain and the “Arab Spring”
18th August 2012 – Dr. Mike Diboll

Dear Lord Howell,

In the light of last week’s jailing of Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, and last nights killing of 16 year-old protester Hussam Al Haddad, I write to you to request clarification of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office position on Bahrain the “Arab Spring”.

In particular, I request that make clear your position on the following statement attributed to you on the Bahrain News Agency website, dated 29th June, 2012:

“The Minister of State at Foreign & Commonwealth Office said that Bahrain was considered an example in the region and its situation should not be linked to the Arab Spring because the matters were completely different in this case, as the country had achieved remarkable reforms over more than ten years.”

http://www.iaa.bh/pressReleasedetails.aspx?id=243

The context is a meeting which took place in London that month between yourself and Bahrain Minister of Interior Lt-General Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa.

According to the BNA, Mr. Rashid Al Khalifa also met with the Director General MI5 Jonathan Evans, Home Office Minister James Brokenshire, Northern Ireland Minister Hugo Swire and Attorney-General Dominic Grieve, and others.

Your words on the FCO website seem more guarded:

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=781036282

I ask you plainly: Is is it or is it not HMG’s position that Bahrain is not part of, or “should not be linked to”, the “Arab Spring”? Is the BNA representing your position accurately?

Any objective analysis of the rhetoric, actions, goals and aspirations of the Bahrain opposition, the slogans, tactics, and attitudes of the protesters in Bahrain, and the often brutal and repressive actions of the current Bahrain government in response to the protests will show that Bahrain is indeed part of the “Arab Spring.”

Indeed, Bahrain has seen, as a percentage of population, the largest and most representative protests of all the countries that have undergone “revolutions of dignity” (as they are known in Arabic) since the current wave of protests began in December 2010.

Moreover, the things that the protesters are protesting about: the crisis of political legitimacy and representation in Bahrain, the lack of genuinely democratic and civil society institutions, and the Al Khalifa state’s institutionalised sectarianism, have direct parallels with the grievances of protesters and opposition movements in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, the Yemen and elsewhere.

In their final crises the regimes headed by Assad, Gaddhafi, and Mubarak all claimed commitment to “reform” with Syria, for example, holding elections. In these instances the FCO rightly condemned such “reform” as a sham, yet, flying in the face of objective evidence and expert opinion, it is only too happy to take Bahrain’s claims to reform at face value.

I worked on one of the Crown Prince of Bahrain’s reform projects 2007-2011, was an eye-witness to the initial uprisings in the spring of 2011, have submitted substantial evidence to the BICI, and know first hand the deeply divided nature of the present regime and the hollow, “on-paper” nature of so many of its reforms, pre- and post-BICI.

It might seem — from the perspective of London — to be an adroit piece of positioning to isolate the “Arab Spring” as a phenomenon affecting only the historically anti-Western Arab republics, to pretend that the monarchical dictatorships of the GCC are immune from the uprisings, and to view the extension of GCC power beyond the Arabian Peninsula as an opportunity to consolidate Western interests in a rapidly changing region. …more