Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment – Bahrain

Bahrain has a long history of Human Rights abuse. The USA and it’s lacky, the UN, has a long history of ignoring the problem. How long can the world sit back and allow the Al Khalifa regime to play lip service to Human Rights while it utterly crushes it’s own citizens? “Dialogue and Reform” are words for those who would subscribe to Bahrain’s “business as usual” approach. Al Khalifa behaves much as the most brutal of wife abusers. When the crisis of his violence comes, he declares repentance and promises change that seems to appear for awhile. The grand charade relieves and reassures his friends and advocates. The world returns to a “repentant norm” and the abuse reappears and often with far more devastating results.

It seems we are in that place again. UNSECO(The UN) pretends it’s okay, Obama and the US pretends it’s okay. They hear what they want to hear; the promise of reform, the lifting of “The National Safety Emergency” (AKA bloody crackdown), all the repentant dialogue. This time it’s a little different, everyone is witness to the crime on the Internet. It’s not so easy to hide anymore. Some even get it, salute to the F1 teams who wanted nothing to do with Al Khalifa’s festival of abuse.

The world has changed but too much denial remains. The enablers assume their familiar role. Bahrain’s Al Khalifa remains in control just as the husband who just smashed his wife’s face and bruised his child. And just like a wife abusers best friend who fears the loss of his drinking buddy, some of the Societies, those that might benefit for the so called “reform”, shove the wife and child into a closet. They pretend all is going well while other Society members are all but forgotten in King Hamad’s torturous dungeons. Strange how justice and freedom so often lose to the lust for power.

The consequence is likely something as tragic as the wife and child beaten bloody unto to death but with global dimension. Blow-back, the unavoidable civil war, the Iranian proxy everyone tried to avoid and warned about. And all the enablers saying “we never saw it coming”… All one has to do is take a look back at Al Khalifa’s history of Human Rights Abuse. Al Khalifa doesn’t get better, he’s pathological, he just becomes more brutal each time he repeats his crime, just like the wife abuser… ….where does anyone really expect this to end up? If Al Khalifa is not stopped now the disaster around the corner will likely cost the West for generations to come. Maybe the USA, my country, can find a way to stop enabling this bastard and actually do the right thing for once. It’s your choice President Obama. No bombs necessary. Mr.President, do you keep America’s drinking buddy around to beat his wife and child another day, or do you stop him from causing anymore grievous harm and suffering?

…for me, I think he needs to go and with great haste.

Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Bahrain 2005 – see the document here