Bahrain Video Feature: Celebrating Creative Resistance (Owen Jones)

People spell out "We Are With You, Bahrain" in candles --- the display is then run over by police jeeps

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Marc Owen Jones writes on his blog:

While some may be forgiven in thinking that Bahrain’s protests are limited to attempted peaceful sit-ins, tyre burnings and roadblocks, they would be wrong. Protest comes in many different forms, and Bahrainis have expressed their discontent in a great variety of ways. While some methods attract more criticism than others, little attention has been paid to softer forms of resistance. I’m not talking about boycotts or withdrawing money from banks, but creative forms of protest that show defiance through humour or beauty.

[This week], for example, activists announced that they would be launching sky lanterns for three days to protest against the Bahrain International Air Show.

Such forms of creative protest are not new. This clip from Saar taken back in March 2011 shows people releasing helium balloons with a Bahrain flag attached. Activists then released other balloons carrying pictures of what I presume to be martyrs.

The video below shows a balloon carrying a V for victory sign of Barbar --- very reminiscent of Elia Suleiman’s 2002 film Divine Intervention:

In a particularly colourful display of dissent, these activists hang a sign containing LEDs saying "Down with [King] Hamad" (thanks @Proud_BH for this):

Perhaps the most amusing efforts are the ones that seem to antagonise the security services. The most notable examples of these are when activists make mini-statues of the Pearl Roundabout [the symbolic centre of the protests, whose monument was destroyed by authorities last spring]. There are countless videos of such creations, yet a number of them seem to really rile the riot police, who understimate the construction quality of said Lulus. This video shows how it takes six jeeps worth of riot police to take down one man-sized statue of the Pearl Roundabout.

This particularly operation to remove a Lulu statue must have taken some time, since it goes from day to night during the process. There are also well over ten officers at the scene.

Other simple acts of defiance which manage to confound the security forces are things like this, a mannequin of a woman holding a sign saying "Free Female Prisoners’. She put up quite a fight for a mannequin, and it took two jeeps and about five men to arrest her. Not quite all the King’s men....

Although the list could go on, I don’t want to inundate you. I would, however, like to finish with one of my favourite videos (see top of entry), which highlights the plight of activists in Bahrain, who are subject to both humiliation and vindictiveness at the hands of the state. The video shows how a group of people spelled out in candles the phrase "We are with you Bahrain". It is then needlessly run over by 8 police jeeps.

What is important about these videos is that they illustrate a tactic of vindictive and spiteful retribution. The statues of Lulu represent no intrinsic danger, yet like the actual GCC Roundabout, the danger lies in their symbolic value. They represent the uprising itself, and are thus a monument through which the collective grief of thousands of Bahrainis is expressed. More importantly perhaps, they represent hope, and it is this that poses the most fundamental threat to the existing order, for any image connected with the uprising is an act of defiance that is an affront to the dignity of the regime, whose position as ‘benefactors’ renders any dissent an act of ungratefulness.

Dispatching six jeeps worth of police officers to remove a harmless statue is nothing more than a show of strength, [but it] is an act of folly, for it shows the regime’s willingess to commit excessive manpower and resources to counter a symbolic threat. This is even more evident in the destruction of the candlelight display of "We are with you, Bahrain". Running over those candles was an act of subjugation, an attempt to humiliate those who created it by highlighting the state’s authority to dominate, destroy and suppress. Perhaps most fittingly, the attempt to extinguish all the candles failed, and some burned brightly on, much like the uprising will continue to do if concessions are not made. Unfortunately though, the lack of justice and meaningful reform is leading to increased frustration. The rise in youth violence is hard to deny, and while acts of creative resistance continue, they will inevitably be forgotten as things escalate.