No solution in sight for Bahrain absent genuine National Dialogue and with opposition leadership in prisons

‘No solution in sight for Bahrain’
Interview with Nabeel Rajab, head of Bahrain Centre for Human Rights
Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:29AM GMT

Bahrain’s opposition figures have voiced frustration at the “National Consensus Dialog” with the government after the Middle Eastern country’s largest opposition party, al-Wefaq, left the negotiations.

In an interview with Press TV, Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, shared his insights on the latest developments in the Persian Gulf kingdom.

The following is a rush transcript of the interview:

Press TV Bahraini ruler, King Hamad [bin Isa Al Khalifa], talked about the success of his reforms in his new speech. Do you have any idea what reforms he is talking about?

Rajab Well, anyone who has witnessed and monitored the situation in Bahrain will realize Bahrain is in a political crisis. There is no such a reform and there is no such a dialogue.

As you know, the dialogue has failed from the day it started because the government, instead of having a dialogue with people they have differences with, they brought groups and organizations and political Islamist groups that was created by the royal court and by the government and intelligence and security institutions – to look like it is a dialogue between the people of Bahrain and with the Bahraini government. But it is not at all.

We think the dialogue should have been with the people who are inside the prisons now. We think that people should be represented in a fair manner. We know that the actual problem in Bahrain is between the people of Bahrain and between the ruling family or the royal elite who are ruling the country, in terms of the rights and elected government or wealth or distribution of power, distribution of wealth. A dialogue [in which] the government is represented or the ruling family is presented, you cannot call it a dialogue.

Here the only decision maker in the country is the ruling family, is the king and the prime minister and the crown prince and not the government at all. Government is only something like very close to puppet [following] the ruler’s decision. So in this dialogue, the government was represented, the ruling family was represented – the representatives of people were not there.

So that is why it has gone to nowhere and in the same way we started, we end this dialogue. We have still hundreds of people behind bars and in prisons: leaders of opposition, human rights defenders, doctors and bloggers and all. We still have more and more people who are fired from work.

On the one side, the government tries to show that they are heading towards reconciliation by forming a commission to do an investigation and inquiry into human rights crisis. On the other side, we see more villages being raided, more people being fired. Today [July 28] the flat of the Doctors without Borders **were raided. Things were taken from there by the security institutions and intelligence institutions. We do not know what happened for the staff of the Doctors without Borders. At least one of them was arrested so far. So the repression, violation, crimes against humanity is continuing on a daily basis. People are being targeted in their life, in their jobs. More teachers, more doctors have been fired today, yesterday, the day before yesterday. The crisis is getting deeper and deeper.

The government yet has no a real political willingness to solve their [Bahraini people’s] problem because they [Manama regime] are backed by the Saudis and they see that the Saudis are backing the government, once they see that the Saudis could fill up the financial gap that has been caused by the crisis, then they think they could continue with their repression. …more