Protesters chanting after police force withdrew from the village of Dair, 15 September
See also Bahrain Feature: Repression Tears Apart a Country
I remember when I read my first article about protests in Bahrain. It was short: in the second paragraph, the author said that the King of Bahrain was going to give the people of his country more than $2650 per family. The conclusion was that it was highly unlikely that protests would catch on.
It's hard to be more wrong.
More than seven months later, and protests are becoming a nightly occurrence. The protest movement has been reinvigorated in recent weeks, partially inspired by Libya, partially inspired by fresh martyrs, entirely dedicated to regaining the momentum they had at the start.
On Wednesday, 31 August, 14 year old Ali Jawad was shot through the eye with a tear gas canister that was fired directly at civilians by police who were standing less than 30 feet away.
Within a week, protests began to grow, specifically in Sitra, the home of young Jawad. On 4 September, we received this video, a man standing in front of a police convoy, refusing to stand down or move:
Last week, Al Wefaq, the largest opposition party in Bahrain, staged a major rally. From the size of the turnout, it became clear that the protesters were not sold by the conciliatory efforts of the Bahraini government:
However, as the protests have been growing, the crackdown in Bahrain has also been growing in intensity in recent weeks. In February and March, tanks and soldiers were the main weapons. Now, police and jeeps are the go-to deterrent. An activist sends us a collection of video clips showing police jeeps attempting to run over peaceful protesters in different villages.
We cannot confirm the validity of the reports, though many of them match eyewitness accounts.
The Death of Ali Jawad's Brother, Sayed
Yesterday, another significant event occurred when Sayed Jawad, the 35 year old brother to the 14 year old martyr, Ali Jawad, suffocated to death after repeated tear gas attacks from police.
The following is an eye-witness account, from activist Said Yousif Almuhafdah, of the death of Sayed Jawad who was killed yesterday by tear gas in Sitra, Bahrain. We have slightly modified the account, rephrased and reworded it from the original Tweets so that it is easier to read in this format:
I'm at the martyr's house with the brother of Sayed Jawad who was killed. He is telling how his brother died, I'll tweet his story in the following tweets.
The 1st time the martyr got suffocated was during the last day of offering grievances for martyr Ali Jawad, and his health deteriorated. But he didn't go to the hospital, fearing that he would be arrested. He was optimistic that his health would improve, and it really did, relatively.
After 3 days, tear gas was shot near his house and he was suffocated again.
On 10 September, tear gas was shot by the door of the martyr's house, while he was there, and he was suffocated badly.
He again didn't go to the hospital, hoping that his health would improve and afraid that he would be arrested...
Until his health deteriorated on 13th September and he was taken to SMC hospital, where he remained for one day.
He remained [in the hospital] for 1 day, in the ICU (intensive care unit), where his blood was exchanged, but he died this evening due to suffocation from tear gas shot by riot forces [reportedly today].
A contact in Bahrain confirms many of the details. However, they describe a much wider and more chaotic scene in Sitra:
"Situation is Sitra is very tense. Protesters are out being attacked brutally by riot police, all main roads are blocked.
[Protesters are] up on their houses' roofs chanting Allah Akbar "God us the Greatest." Personally, I had difficulty getting back to my home because all of Sitra's main roads are blocked by police.
[As we reported] a man was killed after inhaling too much tear gas. He was taken to the hospital today and passed away :(
There's only one person killed today, the other was a 12 year old kid who was hit by a police jeep, but he still lives, eye witnesses thought he passed away because of his critical condition, but he is still alive.
The protests have only grown more intense. There are reports of injuries among the protesters, and this video surfaced of police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the protesters, while traffic backs up:
This morning, the Bahraini government is saying that Sayed Jawad died because of complications from sickle cell anemia. A source has told us that Jawad's family, already bereaved by the death of his younger brother Ali, have refused to take the body out of the hospital because the staff is insisting that he was killed by sickle cell, not tear gas.
And the Protests Will Continue
Activists are planning a new march on the Pearl Roundabout, a momentous monument that was the center of protests before the government tore the monument down. On September 23-24, the protesters will return. Our source says that they are determined to rekindle the protest movement that existed in March. The activists have created this video to promote the protest.
"But it's so peaceful there..."
In March, I visited a store where I frequently shop and ran into a clerk whom I had known for a few months. She remembered hearing that I was a journalist covering the Middle East, and she was absolutely shocked by what was happening in a single country, Bahrain.
This girl had lived in Bahrain, her father was an engineer who worked on oil extraction, so she had lived there for several summers in a row. She had also traveled, to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Israel, and she could believe that unrest might happen in any of those countries... but not Bahrain.
First of all, she said that Bahrain was a peaceful, beautiful little country, and she could never imagine such chaos there. She spoke of the beauty of the Pearl Roundabout monument which has now been destroyed. Perhaps she could get beyond all that, but there was a single reason why she could not believe the news.
Money. To be sure, there were problems in Bahrain (there are problems everywhere), she said, but over 96% of the population of Bahrain is employed, and they have government unemployment benefits for those who are not. She said that she encountered no real abject poverty in her time there, and everyone there seemed happy with their country.
Obviously, however, the problems and inequities in Bahrain lingered below the surface, and always along sectarian lines. Bahrain may have had a great business environment, and little unemployment, but it also had a fair amount of corruption. The only elected legislature has little power, and members of the Shiite majority are barred from important positions in the government or the military. Bahrain has little to no freedom of the press. All of these problems made it a perfect candidate to rank fairly high in The Economist's 2011 Shoe-Throwing Index. Bahrain may be a place where one is free to do business, but it is not a place where one is free to speak.
http://www.economist.com/node/18065663?story_id=18065663
However, my acquaintance who had lived in Bahrain still had a point. According to the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom, Bahrain is the 10th freest economy on the list.
But that's not good enough. When America had its revolution, it was hardly a populace that was starving to death. Fundamentally, our own revolution was about justice and freedom, not money. The King of Bahrain has been unable to buy the loyalty of his people because the protests in Bahrain have never been primarily about bread and butter issues, but political and ideological issues. In other words, Bahrain is the ugly duckling of Arab Spring.
And remember, the ugly duckling was really a swan.