Bahraini Human Right activists still languishing in prisons

The court’s ruling, initially scheduled for Sunday, August 12th, is to decide on Mr. Rajab’s guilt for tweeting statements which the regime of King Hamad Al-Khalifa deems insurrectionary. Until the court rules, Mr. Rajab remains behind bars as a prisoner of the state.

    Yes, you read that correctly, Rajab was imprisoned for utilizing the social medium of tweeting where comments are restricted to 140 characters! In Bahrain today, articulating any opinion which the Khalifas deem subversive will land you in jail. The 48-year-old Nabeel Rajab is only one of the most notable democratic activists to find himself behind prison bars in the kingdom’s dungeons.


Joining Rajab in custody at the present time is 30-year-old activist Zainab Al-Khawaja, a courageous pro-democracy activist who was arrested and sent to jail for peacefully, yet publicly, protesting against the 229-year-old Al-Khalifa monarchy. Zainab, a graduate of the American Studies Center at the University of Bahrain, had previously been injured by Bahraini police who shot her with a tear gas canister in her right thigh in June during another peaceful protest.

Also locked up for voicing his opposition to the family dynasty of the Al-Khalifa is 51-year-old Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, father of Zainab and past president of the BCHR and former director of the Middle East-North Africa region for the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders’ Front Line. Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja drew international attention to the Arab Spring uprising in Bahrain with a 110-day hunger strike which he ended at the end of May 2012 when the regime had doctors in the military hospital force-feed him against his will.

Languishing also in prison, since March of 2011, is 53-year-old Ibrahim Sharif al-Sayed who is General Secretary of the secular liberal National Democratic Action Society (Wa'ad) and one of the most knowledgeable and astute leaders of the pro-democracy opposition. Sharif’s main crime is that he understands the nature of the Khalifa monarchy too well and knows how to dislodge it and is unafraid in organizing to do so. It was inevitable that Sharif would be one of the first to be sent to jail. Moreover, Sharif is a Sunni, which undercuts the regime’s claim that oppositional forces in Bahrain are only comprised of Shia co-religionists acting as an Iranian-directed fifth column.

In addition to the above pro-democracy activists, Bahrain’s prisons are hosting, as well, the following opposition leaders: 64-year-old Haq Movement for Liberties and Democracy Secretary-General Hassan Mushaima, 47-year-old University of Bahrain academic Dr. Abdul-Jalil Al-Sangace who is head of the Human Rights Office as well as Director of the Media and International Relations for the Haq Movement for Liberties and Democracy, Sheikh Mohammed Ali Al-Mahfoodh, Chairman of Amal Society and a prolific writer of letters to President Barack Obama explaining the Bahraini Revolution to him, Board Member of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) Naji Fateel, and countless others who have dared to exercise their rights guaranteed under the Universal Convention on Human Rights.

Bahrain’s geopolitical status as an island nation allows it to easily incarcerate oppositional leadership, torture them, and-if recalcitrant and unrepentant-kill them. Unfortunately for the House of Khalifa, a majority of the citizenry of Bahrain refuse to be enslaved under a despotic monarchical form of government.

Since the February 14th revolution started in 2011, over three quarters of the population regularly march en masse in the streets of Bahrain calling for the removal of the Al-Khalifa and the establishment of a democracy with genuine republican representative government. In addition, police nightly contend with democratic activists in every village and town in Bahrain. The police respond with poison tear gas, arrests, torture, and killings.

    Confident-some say perhaps overconfident-are the Khalifa who grant the US Navy port access to its Fifth Fleet as well as tarmac rights at the Sheik Isa Airbase in Bahrain allowing the US to forward project its military into the Middle East in order to maintain hegemonic control over the region and thus ensuring American theft of Middle Eastern oil through its string of despotic monarchs from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and on into Kuwait. These puppet states are all US & UK proxy-run regimes led by the most corrupt autocratic regimes on Earth, a group of despotic absolute monarchs possessing none of the virtues described in fairy tales and all of the vices humans attribute to the dregs of society.


Keeping the lid on journalistic reporting from the Kingdom is a full-time activity of the Al-Khalifa regime. Seattle-based documentary filmmaker, Jen Marlowe, was deported from the Kingdom in July of this year for attempting to report on the ongoing democracy protests. In May of 2012, Freelance journalist Ahmed Radhi was arrested and disappeared into the Kingdom’s labyrinthian system of torture chambers because he dared to criticize Saudi Arabia’s proposed union with Bahrain.

Three Channel 4 television journalists from the UK were arrested and then deported from Bahrain while attempting to cover a pro-democracy protest march during the controversial Grand Prix car races which took place in Bahrain in mid-April of this year. Ahmed Ismail Hassan, a Bahraini videographer was killed in April of this year while filming a pro-democracy protest in Salmabad, a village southwest of Manama. Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent Finian Cunningham was ordered out of Bahrain on June 18, 2011 due to his uncompromising and critical reporting of the democratic uprising in the country as well as the concomitant brutal oppression, mass arrests, torture, and murder of pro-democracy activists. And this is merely a partial list of the hundreds of bloggers, journalists, and human rights defenders who have been arrested, jailed, tortured, and/or deported from the country since the pro-democracy uprising commenced in February of 2011.

In addition to silencing protesters and journalists, the Bahraini government has enlisted the assistance of at least five American and three UK-based public relations firms to spin the news abroad that Bahrain is once again “open for business” to gullible Brits and Yanks. As well, it appears that academics are now being enlisted to validate the regime’s narrative that all is well in Bahrain. Just recently, a bizarre report was issued by a Dr. Mitchell A. Belfer claiming that “Bahrain is back on track following the unrest and majority of the people have become tired of political bickering and street violence.”

The Bahrain regime’s new “expert” is reportedly the editor of the Central European Journal of International and Security Studies (CEJISS) and is associated with the Prague-based Metropolitan University Department of International Relations and the founder of its European Studies program. If, as this Dr. Belfer concludes, that the “‘coast is clear and tensions have subsided’,” then his findings are in direct contradiction to that of numerous human rights organizations and most international observers of Bahrain.

Whether he is merely a shill for the Khalifa regime or simply delusional as regards the objective situation in Bahrain, we at least know his political allegiance, as he is reported to have asserted that the pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain are waging a “‘losing’ battle as the country slowly gears towards dialogue and reconciliation.” Such wishful thinking on the part of the regime and its lackeys is entirely fanciful and completely ignores the massive and determined opposition to the monarchy in Bahrain. But given that the Al-Khalifa have long been living a fairy-land existence with little connection to the lives of everyday citizens in Bahrain, it follows that they may indeed believe that there is no such thing as objective reality. ‘Simply say it isn’t so, and the protesters instantly vanish,’ appears to be their strategy. If only life were so simple…