“You support human rights, don’t you?”, “So you admit it!” – A tale of defending Human Rights in Bahrain by Radhika Sainath

Day and night in a Bahraini jail
by Radhika Sainath – 20 February, 2012

You can read the first part of Sainath’s account from Bahrain here.

In the alleys of Manama, a Bahraini police commander yelled at me that I had been disrespectful, as the other policemen dragged the young man away. The woman who had tried to protect him with her arms and her body sobbed. The youth was certain to be beaten, likely tortured. She thanked me, though I felt I had failed.

I hurried back through narrow alleys, past sand-colored homes and onto the main road, the sounds of percussion grenades guiding me to the site where the Bahraini democracy activists had since re-gathered.

Everything seemed cast in a soft white light. Downtown Bahrain could be any city, small stores lined the broad main road, some open, some with ridged metal shutters pulled down over the glass. Dozens of Indians, presumably workers or small businessmen, stood outside these stores watching the police, and a certain slender wavy-haired Palestinian-American walked away from police officers calling after her.

I kept my head down and my eyes affixed to the iPad, walking down the sidewalk, then turning left between two parked vans. I avoided eye contact with Huwaida Arraf as she passed me, walking quickly away from the police officers pursuing her.
Radhika
Radhika Sainath

I walked further down the street, to what I believed was a safe distance away, and tweeted a photo of the police surrounding Huwaida. I could not see them, there were a dozen of them, maybe more. A number of Bahraini women had surrounded her and were trying to help.

One policeman looked over and yelled out at me “No photos.” I put the ipad down, tucking it in the back pocket of my messenger bag, then backed up the street a few feet and joined the group of Indian men watching. The police fired several rounds of percussion grenades in the other direction. BOOM BOOM BOOM. The crowd around Huwaida scattered, leaving only her, the police, the Indians and me.

Perhaps I could just blend in with the Indian shopkeepers and watch, I thought, as they loaded Huwaida into the van. I tried to take another picture, but I noticed the police were looking at me. A group of police approached and asked me for my passport.

“We just need to see the name,” they said.

I held it out for them. They leaned forward, squinting at my names. One looked down at his Blackberry, and then looked up at the name.

“Haida hiyye,” he said in Arabic. “That’s her.”

I was done. It was my name that had been on the first Witness Bahrain press release announcing our presence the day before. Huwaida had posted almost all the video interviews of Bahraini human rights activists to our website. They were after us.

A dozen policewomen surrounded me, shields out, and one stood directly in front of me. Did they think I would flee? I asked why I was being held multiple times, if I was under arrest, what laws I had broken and if I was free to go. No one would talk to me. From what I could see from behind the police, the street had cleared. I looked at my watch. It was 4:15 p.m.

No one would know I had been arrested. They would think I had run from the tear gas as the people did in the villages every day and every night, taking refuge in the homes of strangers until the gas and the police cleared. What would become of me?

They put me in a police van and took me to a jail in downtown Manama. It was filled with policemen in black combat boots—the riot police—staring, but saying nothing. I passed the room where Huwaida was being held and was stuck into another.

I sat there for the next several hours, interrogated on and off. They wanted to see my photos. I refused. They wanted me to name names. I refused. I heard that my Bahraini lawyer had come to the jail, but been turned away. I asked repeatedly what crime I committed.

“We’ll get to that later,” I was told.

And then came the question, said in a slightly menacing tone that made one want to deny everything.

“You support human rights, don’t you?” The police officer leaned in as if trying to trap me. I paused.

“Of course I support human rights.”

“So you admit it!”

They had got me. In Bahrain, supporting human rights was something akin to terrorism, and I had just admitted to it.

It wasn’t till about midnight when Huwaida and I were both taken to meet U.S. vice-consul Jennifer Smith, and her assistant, Ms. Joyce. …more