Nabeel Rajab: A Sounding Voice from Pearl Square

Nabeel Rajab: The Eternal Voice of Pearl Square
By: Mariam Abdallah – 14 February, 2012 – al-Akhbar

One of the leaders of the uprising in Bahrain has been active against the country’s monarchy since a young age. Now he is joined by a new generation of protesters who seek to bring change to the island kingdom.

His slogans against the Bahraini regime used to be daubed on school walls. Thirty years on, the slogans have turned into tweets, documenting the daily pains of the Bahraini people.

The medium may have changed, but the message has not. Nabeel Rajab has dedicated himself to campaigning for his people’s freedom by whatever means. This has given him the largest Twitter following in Bahrain, and the fourth largest in the Arab world.

Born in 1964 to a long-established pro-regime Bahraini family, Rajab began his life of activism at the age of 16. He was expelled from school for his political dissent, despite his academic excellence. He was also active in the student movement at a university in Poona in India, though he avoided joining any single political faction.

Upon returning to Bahrain in 1988, he began campaigning in an organized, albeit clandestine fashion, establishing links with international human rights organizations.

He was one of the co-founders of the Bahrain Society for Human Rights. Originally set up in London, it operated underground in Bahrain until it was legalized in 2001.

In 2002, Rajab helped establish the Bahrain Center for Human Rights along with his colleague and mentor Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, currently in prison on charges of planning to overthrow the regime.

Rajab’s voice rises slightly as he speaks of his determination to secure his friend’s freedom. “Al-Khawaja is part of my education. We worked on issues that nobody was allowed to touch, especially the ruling family’s privileges, sect-based discrimination, and migrant labor rights. I owe it to this person not to let him remain in jail.”

He stresses that opposition in Bahrain cannot be quashed by pressure, repression, and imprisonment because that will only strengthen people’s resolve to peacefully create a rights-based society. “This is what the regime fails to understand.”

He stresses that opposition in Bahrain cannot be quashed by pressure, repression, and imprisonment.
Rajab’s work has kept him under scrutiny. His wife and children are constantly threatened, and have lost any sense of security since the February 14 uprising. His elderly mother has lost her hearing and is now almost blind. “Perhaps that is fortunate,” he remarks. “That has spared her a lot of pain. She doesn’t know what is happening. When they fired tear-gas canisters at our house, we told her the noise was coming from a faraway village.”

Rajab became almost synonymous with the Bahraini uprising during the Pearl Roundabout sit-in. He found himself on the front line. …more