More protest violence
The demonstration as it was in the morning. Photo source: alSanabis.com
There is basically a pitched battle currently taking place near Dana Mall. I was there about a half hour ago (8pm) and there were masses of riot police on one side firing what I assume is tear gas and rubber bullets. While on the other side in Sanabis housing were some youths who were responding with I believe rocks and had blocked one of the roads with burning tyres and rubbish. Someone emailed me this link to a video of the skirmish from earlier in the day. And some photos of the demonstration that took place in the morning can be found here.
It started out in the afternoon as another demonstration outside Dana Mall to demand the release of the men who were jailed because of the Dec 25 airport clash. According to the people I spoke to, the riot police were soon on the scene and the protesters refused to leave so the cops attacked them (with tear gas and possibly violence). Several of the demonstrators took refuge in Dana Mall so the police sealed it off and I’m not sure what else. And since then skirmishes between the riot police and other youths have been taking place in the space opposite the mall. I’ve been told that at least twenty people were injured, nine seriously requiring hospitalization. Many of the injured were trapped inside the mall and unable to get medical attention until people very very high up (i.e. the interior minister) and got involved and secured their release. And there have also been several arrests. Bear in mind that all of this is based on what people have told me and not anything that I saw myself, so it may be wrong or missing details.
I am quite surprised that the government took this action while the Formula 1 Grand Prix is taking place down south and with so much international media and tourists on the island. If the government was smart it would have allowed the protests and even used them to portray the country as being the most free place in the Arab world. But now after these skirmishes it will be a bit harder for the govt to claim that Bahrain is a stable investment environment, as I’m sure it is desperate to do. And there are more demonstrations planned for tomorrow and the day after. Had today’s violence not occurred, I don’t think the coming protests would have attracted many people, but I suspect that now there will be alot more people.
I’m not sure whether whether this is a case of the regime being stupid and incompetent, or whether this was a calculated act by a section of the government with different goals than others. Or maybe the govt is guessing that the media coverage of the skirmishes will not affect it too much.
Update: Montadayat.org has photos of some of the people who were injured here.
Update 2: Photos of some of the skirmishes that took place inside Dana Mall can be found here (thanks to Wattani.net).
Photo source: Wattani.net via BahrainForums
Photo source: Wattani.net via BahrainForums
March 10th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
[...] This is not all. While people were working round the clock to make the F1 event a success, others were working in the open, calling for more rallies and demonstrations to bring internal issues to the international spotlight. As always, Chanad was on the frontline, trying to put two and two together and report to us what was happening on ground zero. [...]
March 11th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
“Several of the demonstrators took refuge in Dana Mall”. Lol.
March 12th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Anon: As I made clear, what I wrote was based on stuff I heard from others, not anything I could confirm myself at the time. That said, the GDN today quotes the owner of the Dana Mall hypermarket as saying:
“They were not there to break things, but to hide - I saw about 30 to 40 people hiding in the kitchen in one of the restaurants.”
And this is the same as what I was told yesterday by an acquaintance of mine who owns a shop in the mall and was there during the incident.
March 14th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
A friend in Bahrain told me the unrest is sometimes caused by the objections of the religious groups to the somewhat ‘free’ attitude of the authorities to foreign female ‘comfort’ workers and the availability of alcohol in Bahrain. Is this true?
March 16th, 2006 at 8:54 am
hey scroll down to the eleventh picture on the first update link of the injured ppl. WTF is that. its a fukin graze, i get one uv them wrestling wit my lil bro. obviously, sum1’s to blame for wut happened but its not the government and the pictures are biased towards the rioters. but at the end of the day who started all this shit - the rioters, but do we see pictures of wut they did?? NO!
March 16th, 2006 at 8:54 am
soz ppl its the tenth pic
March 16th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Spanky: how are you so sure that it was the demonstrators who started the violence? Were you there at the time? I was not there either, so I can’t be sure, but I have attended many other protests and it has always been the riot police the who start the confrontation by firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
Also, if indeed the goal of the riot police is to “maintain order”, what on earth were they thinking when they fired tear gas into the main lobby of Dana Mall while there were thousands of shoppers present??
March 16th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
No mention here of the rioters burning down a building with thirty people inside. Silence is the best option if it means putting the rioters and the people behind them in a bad light.
So much for the ‘word on the street’.
March 16th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
no proof of the ‘rioters’ having done so either. the idea was suggested by an interior ministry official, and has since been taken up by figures in the local media as part of a reprehensible campaign of villification, without any attempt to actually explore the issue and find out what exactly happened, how, and the seemingly forgotten question — why.
so much for innocent until proven guilty.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
chanad: im sure that the riot police did not fire the tear gas into the dana mall lobby on purpose, i am positive that their highest priority is to protect the local population from coming to any harm rather than firing a can of tear gas into an area prone to being occupied by innocent shoppers. This incident may have occured due to a number of reasons: the police misjudged their aim, the actual rioters may have thrown it into the mall to escalate the situation…..(it goes on)
Your other point was that how am i so sure that it was the demonstrators who started the violence, the answer is simple: im not. I assumed that it was the rioters who started it as riot police are there to disperse them and to prevent confrontation. i would assume that it was the rioters who started the violence as the riot police are not a pack of aggressive wolves who are there to tear the rioters to shit. i think that the use of the tear gas and rubber bullets was in order because the demonstrators were being violent and judging from the pictures, they looked pretty pissed off to me.
and i think that the demonstrators were ready to get violent cos the situation with the arrests of the airport crashers was quite screwed up. so if the riot police some how did start the violence , i think they did this because they pre-anticipated the anger of the demonstrators and tried to answer agression with agression
my previous post may have been quite forthcoming but i didnt consider any body elses opinion
chanad, im not for the riot police and no i wasnt there, BUT there is a chance that the violence may have started with the demonstrators, all the same it may have been the riot police.
March 17th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Spanky said:
“I assumed that it was the rioters who started it as riot police are there to disperse them and to prevent confrontation. i would assume that it was the rioters who started the violence as the riot police are not a pack of aggressive wolves who are there to tear the rioters to shit.”
You need to be careful when making assumptions. Sadly Spanky, on many occasions I have seen the riot police be exactly that: a pack of aggressive wolves. Recall the Royal Court incident in June when they beat up the peaceful protestors. Or then in July when they were beaten up on Al Fateh Corniche. We’re not talking about just some light injuries. There were broken bones, concussions, internal bleeding, which some people are STILL undergoing treatment for.
Or what about this protest in January in Manama where among the people who were beaten was Dr Abduljalil Singace — who walks on crutches because of a physicial disability!! Did the police really need to use violence against Dr Singace to “maintain peace and order”?
And there was also another demonstration in Sanabis on Jan 19. The protesters were planning on marching on to the road by the Exhibition Centre but saw all the riot police trucks that were amassed there, so they turned back into Sanabis village to avoid any conflict. The distance between the riot police and and the demonstrators was about 500m. As the protesters were marching back into the village — AWAY from the riot police — the police suddenly drove up to them and started firing rubber bullets and tear gas at them. I saw this all with my own eyes.
The list goes on. I hope this is sufficient to show that riot police on many many occasions have provoked confrontation rather maintain peace and order, and therefore we should not just assume one case. If you doubt my words then I strongly encourage you to come to the next demonstration for yourself and observe what happens. There is a huge huge difference between what the govt and media reports, and what actually happens on the ground.
March 17th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
ur right. I agree. i based my comments on what is publisised by the media. Im gratefull that you gave many first hand accounts of the provocative actions of the police as it does give the other side of the story, that i havent heard. to be truthfull, i was not aware of many of the above accounts and as far as i’ve heard it is usually the rioters who start it. Obviously, i see, that that is untrue. I c the huge huge difference between what is broadcasted and what actually happens. :)
March 18th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
I’m glad you’ve kept an open mind about this Spanky.
Let me just clarify my position though. The demonstrators are not all angels, as we have seen them use violence recently also. However, what I disagree with is the moral symmetry between them and the riot police that people often claim. Yes, some of the demonstrators are guilty of violence, but very often it is the police who provokes it.
Furthermore I think the police must be held to higher standard than the demonstrators. The demonstrators who turn violent act individually, usually in defiance of the calls for non-violence by the organizers, and there have been many arrests and trials against them (not to mention beatings). The police however is a state institution so they are, in theory, meant to be servants of the people; they get paid out of the national coffers and get their orders from the political leadership. So surely the police must be held accountable when they break the law.
Anyways, thanks for stopping by :)
March 19th, 2006 at 8:28 am
[...] You know, this can’t be good. There is basically a pitched battle currently taking place near Dana Mall (in Bahrain –c.). I was there about a half hour ago (8pm) and there were masses of riot police on one side firing what I assume is tear gas and rubber bullets. While on the other side in Sanabis housing were some youths who were responding with I believe rocks and had blocked one of the roads with burning tyres and rubbish. Someone emailed me this link to a video of the skirmish from earlier in the day. And some photos of the demonstration that took place in the morning can be found here. [...]
March 19th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Excuse me. Nobody on this blog has given even the slightest clue as to what this riot was about. Please enlighten those of us who do not live in Bahrain.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
Sorry Tak, I was going to follow up with a post writing a bit more about this but I never got around to it. (In my defence though I think I did provide “the slightest clue” in the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph).
On Dec 25, a Shiite cleric was detained at the airport on his return from Iran. His supporters gathered at the airport and held a sit in; the riot police showed up, and a clash ensued. Read here. Several people were later arrested for their invovlement in the demonstration violence and were sentenced to two years in prison. The families and supporters of the prisoners have been holding weekly demonstrations to demand their release, accusing the govt of sentencing them for political reasons. Last Friday’s protest was for the same reason, especially hoping to make use of the international publicity that they could get because the Formula 1 races were also taking place.
Although the protest was specifically to demand the release of the airport clash prisoners, the demonstrators are angry at the govt for a whole range of reasons related economics, politics and human rights. So the riots that later broke out was due to general resentment towards the Al Khalifa regime among those youths.
March 20th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Thank you. So in a nutshell it’s Shiite/Sunni tension that seems to affect the Gulf region, but seems to be more apparent in Bahrain because of the Shiite majority - I’m told it’s 90% Shiite.
I’m wondering if the current problems in Iraq will destabilize the other Gulf emirates where there are also large Shiite minorities. There are reports of Shiite groups becoming more vocal, particularly after the destruction of the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra.
March 20th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Thanks. So in a nutshell it’s Shiite/Sunni tension that seems to affect the Gulf region, but seems to be more apparent in Bahrain because of the Shiite majority - I’m told it’s 90% Shiite.
I’m wondering if the current problems in Iraq will destabilize the other Gulf emirates where there are also large Shiite minorities. There are reports of Shiite groups becoming more vocal, particularly after the destruction of the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra.
March 20th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Tak, I don’t think it would be correct to call it Shiite/Sunni tension. The tension is between the Al Khalifa ruling regime and a section of the people (who happen to be mostly Baharna Shiites). This is political, not sectarian.
There does exist tension and mistrust between the Sunni and Shiite communities in Bahrain, and that has certainly affected political scene, but the real issue is political. There have been no physical or verbal attacks by Shias on Sunni symbols or personalities. And there have been no attacks by Sunni (civilians) on Shia symbols or personalities. (asides from one or two nutjobs). At the protests the demonstrators chant slogans specifically against the Prime Minister and the Al Khalifa ruling regime… it is never against Sunnis as a community.
In fact it is the govt that seeks to portray the violence as having a sectarian nature, rather than a political one, to hide the fact that the citizens are angry at its political, economic and social policies. Dr Abdulhadi Khalaf explains this in detail in this paper.
I’m not really sure about the Shiite communities in the other Gulf countries, but I can guess based on what I know from Bahrain. The events in Iraq will have an effect around the Gulf, but I don’t think it will be too much. At the end of the day the real driving factor is what policies the local leaders choose to treat their Shiite communities. External events will not be able to do more than serve as a spark to light the domestic problems.
(btw Shias prbly make up closer to 70% of the Bahraini population, but there are no official stats)
March 20th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
well actually chanad thanks to these protesters we will allways have a reason to flood Bahrain with slave labor, low wage, depserate people from third world shitholes like india so they can spread there filfth and desperation for work forget about the local population bring kumar here who has no idea about womens make-up and have his free ass sell it because he is so cheap to hire in al-anwar store best thing we can do is give them millions of condums. Took my wife to anwar store Tubli wanted make-up they have the stupidist free visa indians selling make-up can not answer a single question big juoke this place is turning into GDN says they are getting tough on free visas this is the biggest lie in Bahrain because it is all about the money thousands of Bahrainis live off the free visa money wake up. the indians are just like mexicans will do anything to get here.
March 20th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
As I know you are a foriegner bengali, shut your curry pisshead mouth and go back to dhaka. By the way kumar your Bahraini passport will never be issued sorry for the good news, go home and make 10 baby future carwashers for Bahrain.
March 20th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Al/Josh: Welcome back! It’s been a while since you last showed your face here. Incidentally, I’m in the middle of writing an upcoming post about migrants in Bahrain, so I might reference your recent comments in it, as they provide interesting fodder. I’ll look forward to more racist comments then.
Thank you, come again!
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:51 am
I dont understand how some one can call destroying public property in the airport a political or economic thing. Jail terms have been given and the rebels of the country should sit in their cells n think bout the cost of damage they caused and peoples lifes they put in danger. It has nothing to do with Islam or differences of opinion within islam.
Quran states, what property isnt urs, dont take it from another nor damage it. its about time these young thugs and their masterminds get some hard core education in their blood vessels, i guess jail time is the only way they will learn.
As for human rights, i agree. all humans have rights but it doesnt mean we use those freedoms to abuse others property or endanger other persons in public shopping malls and roads.
What on earth is this country coming to ? Do we need more thugs or harder jail sentences for thuggish behaviour. i take the latter, If one does the crime he/she should pay for it and do the time !!!!
May 14th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
i totally agree with mariam,, i think the govt. should crack down on these un-civilized criminals that damage our country’s rep. for a cause that isnt even clear anymore. If they have their differences with the govt, thats one thing but blowing up traffic signals in their own villages, burning tires and going crazy in airports isnt a way to bring their point across.
May 14th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Khalid, I agree 100% that the kids burning tyres and police cars need to be brought to justice. But we also need to recognize at the same time that arresting these kids alone is not going to stop the problem until we also address the underlying social problems. It’s not normal for kids to risk getting arrested and beat up every weekend, so let’s try to understand why this continues to happen (which is very different from asking the kids what their demands are).