UK throws in with regime to brutalize Democracy Advocates

Bahrain receives military equipment from UK despite violent crackdown
14 February, 2012 – Shia Post

Britain has continued to sell arms to Bahrain despite continuing political unrest in the Gulf state, new official figures disclose.

According to the figures the government approved the sale of military equipment valued at more than £1m in the months following the violent crackdown on demonstrators a year ago. They included licences for gun silencers, weapons sights, rifles, artillery and components for military training aircraft.

Also cleared for export to Bahrain between July and September last year were naval guns and components for detecting and jamming improvised explosive devices. No export licences were refused.

Security forces in Bahrain fired teargas and stun grenades at protesters in pre-dawn skirmishes before Tuesday’s first anniversary of the uprising in the Gulf kingdom. Armoured vehicles patrolled the capital, Manama, in a security clampdown after protesters flung volleys of petrol bombs at police cars. There was also a massive police presence in Shia Muslim villages ringing Manama, with helicopters buzzing overhead, underlining the concerns of the Sunni-Muslim-led monarchy about a new explosion of civil unrest by Bahrain’s disgruntled Shia majority.

After the exposure a year ago of Britain’s approval of arms sales, including crowd control equipment, guns, and ammunition to Bahrain, Libya and Egypt, the government revoked 158 export licences, including 44 covering military exports to Bahrain.

The latest figures, published on the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills website, also show that during the third quarter of last year Britain exported arms valued at more than £1m to Saudi Arabia, including components for military combat vehicles and turrets. During last year’s uprising, Saudi Arabia sent forces to Bahrain in British military trucks.

Britain also supplied equipment, including components for military combat vehicles, weapons night sights, communications and rangefinding, valued at more than £1m, to Egypt’s armed forces.

Vince Cable, the business secretary, admitted to a committee of MPs last week: “We do trade with governments that are not democratic and have bad human rights records … We do business with repressive governments and there’s no denying that.”

He was giving evidence to the Commons committee on arms export controls whose chairman, the former Conservative defence minister Sir John Stanley, accused the government of adopting a “rosy-tinted” and “over-optimistic” approach to authoritarian regimes. …more