A National Day in Bahrain Special: Protests, The Arrest of Zainab Alkhawaja, A Death, & Tear Gas Everywhere

The arrest of Zainab Alkhawaja

See also Friday's Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Beat Goes On --- Anticipating Friday's Protests
Thursday's Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Developments in Bahrain

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The regime's run-up to National Day --- actually yesterday and today, the anniversary of King Ahmad's accession to the throne --- started on Monday with a visit by the monarch to British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Indeed, both Britain and the US have gone out of their way to assist the occasion with hailings of "progress". London's Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt --- a target of the regime's PR firm, Bell Pottinger, claiming its long-time access to him --- spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Bahrain. While no details of meetings were forthcoming, Burt put out video testimony to the "strong base" laid by the King for reform, a view "almost universally shared" by Bahrainis.

Michael Posner, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, has also been in the kingdom, and he marched in step with his British counterpart: "We strongly support the King's courage in initiating the review and his commitment to address the reforms outlined in the BICI report. We commend the Government of Bahrain for accepting the reports' essential related findings and recommendations and undertaking steps to implement needed reforms."

Yet Posner's statement, issued on Friday, probably should be highlighted for this declaration: "I welcome the opportunity to get another firsthand view of recent developments here."

Really? Let's have another look at "developments".

Thursday started gently enough, with a few women trying to launch the activist campaign to occupy Budaiya Highway, a major thoroughfare in the capital Manama. Two of them even took time for tea on a roundabout. 

Security forces were successful in preventing a mass gathering on the highway. Instead, the action moved to the villages nearby, where police had sealed off the entrances to prevent any marches. Inevitably, this led to clashes with village youth and the blanketing of the villages with tear gas.

One of those tear-gas episodes took place outside a cafe, where police tried to disperse a group of 15 men, none of whom were involved in the protests. The incident was soon elevated to front-line social media news because of the presence of journalist Lauren Bohn and New York Times photojournalist Adam Ellick --- who was briefly held with reporter Nicholas Kristof by police last week --- inside. Bohn's Twitter message got to the point: "I said I was a journalist. Police didn't give a shit, kept firing."

And then there was the confrontation that defined Thursday and may well define National Day. Activist Zainab Alkhawaja, who had a dramatic visual showdown with police last month, marched with several women to a roundabout in Abu Saiba.

Had the security forces left her, it is unlikely that there would have been any more than a ripple in the news. However, they chose to move Alkhawaja. And when they did, first by using a sound grenade and then by dragging her by the arm into detention, the security forces had written the headlines. The photographs and videos rushed from Twitter to outlets like EA to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN.

That was far from the end of the day, however. During the afternoon, we had noticed a Twitter message from a pro-regime activist that traffic had been blocked when a pedestrian was hit by a car. Four hours later, the confirmation came through that the pedestrian was a protester, Ali Alqassab, followed by the claim that he had met his death as he was being chased by security forces.

This morning the regime's Bahrain News Agency runs the banner, "Happy National Day", with the headline, "Wise Leadership Congratulated", citing the "cables of congratulations from leaders of Arab, Islamic and friendly countries marking the National and Accession Days".

No doubt there will be the perfunctory statements today --- perhaps we will even see them from Washington and London, who are dedicated to a strategy of "regime adjustment" to ensure that vital links with Bahrain are not strained --- but when National Day formally opened in Bahrain at 12:01 a.m., it did so to continuing protests and clashes in the kingdom's villages.

Zainab Alkhawaja is still in prison, along with many other political detainees, and Ali Alqassab will join the list of "martyrs" as he is buried. And the smell of tear gas --- which, according to an EA correspondent was "over most of Bahrain, except Rafa' and parts of Moharraq" --- lingers.