Press TV has interviewed Ralph Schoenman, a political commentator from Berkeley, to further discuss the issue.
Press TV: This call for a dialogue on the part of King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa comes as US President Barack Obama has called on both the government and the opposition in Bahrain to engage in dialogue. This is while he has referred to the Bahraini regime as a friend and a partner of the US.
How far is this call for dialogue going to go? Does this come too little, too late?
Schoenman: The dialogue is entirely cosmetic. It has no root in any prospect of transforming the dictatorship or the terrorizing of its population.
With respect to Nabeel Rajab, he has been explicit in every respect about what has been done to him and his family and to the people of Bahrain. "The dawn of May 21, 2011, specifically during our sleep at around 3:15 a.m. [Bahrain timing], our home was attacked [by Bahraini security forces] for the second time in a row [between the period from April 18 to May 21]. But [the attack] this time was different [from the previous attack, as] the tear-gas bombs were not thrown by hand, but fired by a weapon towards our window. The bombs shattered the window and several packs entered the apartment of my brother Nader Rajab [while he and his family were asleep]. It is an attempted murder by exposing my family to suffocation during sleep! This attack intended to silence me and terrorize my family [in order to] pressure me to stop carrying out my duties and human rights activities”. It's a long statement, it's a precise statement and it's a detailed statement.
There isn't scintilla of evidence to suggest that Nabeel Rajab is considered as a partner of negotiation with this regime, he is a passionate and ardent opponent of every aspect of its repression, and he doesn't lose a moment or a day to articulate this reality and to document what has been done to the people and to the doctors, and to the wives of the doctors, who are doctors themselves, and to their families.
I think it is important to note that The Guardian/Observer, on May 28th, published an important article called the United Kingdom training Saudi forces to crush Arab spring, and specifically the Ministry of Defense was cited as having prepared and trained the Saudi attack forces for Bahrain. Defense Minister Nick Harvey confirmed in the parliament, last week, that the United Kingdom's armed forces are training the Saudi National Guard deployed in Bahrain, training revived by the British military for some time. Jonathan Edwards, a Plaid Cymru MP, with his table parliamentary questions to the Ministry of Defense about its close ties to Saudi Arabia, found it difficult to understand why Britain is training troops for repressive action in Bahrain, and in the region.
The role of the Unites States and Great Britain and using the Wahhabi attack forces in Bahrain is explicated and documented beyond any doubt, and again in respect to The Guardian /Observer: “A chilling account of the brutal clampdown sweeping in Bahrain. Mahmoud, a Shia who lives near Bahrain's capital tells how Saudi soldiers wage a campaign of sectarian violence, [the] Shia villages and suburbs of the capital, Manama, has been a scene of non-stop intimidation, violence and threats. Even trying to move around in normal ways has become life-threatening. I live in one of the villages near Manama. One night about 7.30pm, I parked in front of my father-in-law's house and walked towards the door, [when at least] 50 armed and masked thugs - [they were] not in security forces uniform - appeared from one of the village [lanes and told me to stop], pointing their shotguns at me. “It is a detailed account of what is described over and over again by eye witnesses.
I want to just mention at this point that the doctors, and their families, and their wives are subject to the most horrendous treatment, detention, disappearance, and torture. I received a communication, two days, ago from the wives of one of the doctors describing this reality. I want to share my concerns and feeling with you, I know she goes to trail from the female doctors who were released from jail; medics are being forced to give false confessions under torture. These are filmed by Bahraini TV. There are video tapes put on TV after the trial, the children are suffering at school and just cries without talking. Sarah faces, the humiliation from her mates, [And an] eight year old fears of losing himself, and his father. That's the daily reality of this barbarous repression, and it is supported and sponsored by the US, enacted by the security forces, shock troops of the Wahhabi dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, and taking as hostage the people of Bahrain, the women doctors, the physicians, the medical profession itself.
Press TV: All eyes are on the lifting of the state of emergency in Bahrain. I would like to get you opinion on this. What do you see transpiring, once the state of emergency is lifted? Because we do know that the regime has stepped up its campaign of intimidation and repression. Would you say it has succeeded in effectively quelling this revolution?
Schoenman: Well, the first thing that I would like to say is that the human rights movement in Bahrain has already announced new mass demonstration planned for the 1st of June.
The population, although horribly mistreated and repressed, is not intimidated. No, I do not think that lifting of the state of emergency is again a paper act on the part of authority. The news is they will be as repressive as before, they will not succeed in stopping the resistance on the part of the population.
Let me emphasis that the trade unions movement, the General Federation of [Bahrain] Trade Unions in Bahrain, which represent 71 unions and 61 organizations, had organized and implemented a general strike. And there is a massive repression which is still going on the workers, which I'm going to read from one of the leaders of the trade union movement, the movement was not a sectarian, people inspired by the Arab spring in Tunisia and in Egypt, Shia and Sunni and secular forces were involved in this movement. Now 2500 workers in the private and public sector have been sacked, and now hunted because of their political opinions. Employers, contractor job and shops are closed and punished because of their ... political opinion.
The most democratic and independent trade union movement in the region is being deconstructed by firing and detentions, and disappearances of our union leaders, strikes are banned by ministerial order in 15 sectors, most of which are not even essential according to internationally ... standards, many hundreds of university students have disappeared, others have been deprived of their fellowships because they are Shia, our they have taken part in rallies at embassies. It's a long and detailed accounting of the nature of the repression, the way this targeted union activists and the trade union movement itself, the population at large, and it is a declaration population of defiance and a resistance coming from the leaders of the trade union movement, as from the Center for Human Rights, as from the doctors, as from the women, who have been have been targeted.
I want to emphasis that the Ahlulbayt News Agency (ABNU), on the 31st of May, Bahrain has been abusing female doctors. Female doctors [who] were released had told Agence France-Presse (AFP) they were abused and tortured at the hands of the interrogators in detention centers across Bahrain, they were forced under severe beating and verbal abuse to confess to backing their co-religionist protesters, they were told to testify against colleagues at Salmaniya hospital under torture. Agence France-Presse tried unsuccessfully to get an official response to these statements; there were claims of continual sexual harassment.
It is a report today on the ongoing abuse of female Shia doctors or women who have been resisting this oppression, in general. I want to emphasis again in these reports what come through, loud and clear, is that children are being targeted. Children have been shot and when taken into hospitals and treated, the armed forces and security forces invade those hospitals and remove these children from their hospital beds and their families have been given back the bodies and they are eviscerated, they are sewn up from the navel to the throat.
And as reported by Finian Cunningham in The Irish Times: and the reports that I have been writing in press in the United States, they are following the Israeli example of harvesting and marketing the organs of the children, this is a measure of the vicious character of the Al Khalifa dictatorship in Bahrain, and the unbridled steps it is prepared to take to torment and suppress this population and their aspirations for democratic control and freedom in Bahrain.
REZ/PKH
No comments:
Post a Comment