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Bahraini women pay heavy price for protests

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Sarah Cheverton
WVoN co-editor

How much do you know about Bahrain?

No, it’s not a quiz. And it’s obviously a rhetorical question.

The point is that until recently, I didn’t know anything about Bahrain either.

Now I know that along with many other nations in the Arab world, people there are desperately fighting for their freedom against an oppressive regime with some frankly shady links to the West.

Sound familiar?

Bahrain is a small island the Huffington Post describes as “no bigger in area than New York City”.

For nearly two years, the Shiite population have been fighting what spray-painted walls in the Bahrain village of Sanabis, where recent protests began, describe as ‘Arab apartheid’.

Although the Shiite population comprises some 70% of the overall population, it is ruled by a Sunni monarchy that conquered the island in the 18th century.

The monarchy has been accused of institutional discrimination against the Shiites in housing, employment, and education as well as failing to uphold their civil rights.

On Friday 23 September 2011, on the eve of national elections, thousands of Bahrainis went out to protest for democracy and political reform.

Some protests centred on a landmark called the ‘Pearl Roundabout’ (also referred to in press reports as Pearl Square’.

The Roundabout was also the site of a violent government crackdown on protesters in March of this year, when King al-Khalifa, with the assistance of Saudi Arabia (another international fan of women’s rights) sent in 1200 troops to crush Shiite protests.

Protesters were forcibly removed from the Roundabout and since then, according to the New York Times, “Bahrain has taken on the likeness of a police state”, with routine reports of mass arrests, and torture, as well as a series of laws threatening what few civil rights existed to protect the Shiite population.

The Sunni monarchy is also seen as being particularly conservative on women’s rights.

As the video above and others like it illustrate – and as we have reported in similar uprisings throughout the Middle East – women are at the centre of Bahrain’s protest movement, including well known Bahraini activist in exileMaryam Al-Khawaya, recently interviewed for WVoN.

A Twitter feed supporting Maryam’s father,  Bahrain human rights activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, who is currently imprisoned by the regime for his activism, stated plainly in a Tweet on Saturday 24 that:

“Women have played a pivotal role in the #Bahrain struggle 4 rights + freedom. Seems the govt is adamant on punishing them 4 that these days”

And continued:

“The #Bahrain govt has intentionally targeted women in this latest crackdown, it is a dangerous precedence that needs 2 b addressed urgently”

Reports have been sent to WVoN from Fatima Karimi of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights of female protesters being beaten, arrested and humiliated by riot police – including one young girl who vomited blood after suffocating after tear gas was fired in a Bahrain village.

“Samah Alderazi,” writes Fatima Karimi, “Another female protester says riot police caught her and beat her up and hit her with batons.”

On Friday 23 September, 38 women and seven girls who were protesting in a shopping mall in the nation’s capital Manama were arrested and accused of constituting ‘an illegal public gathering’, rioting and attacking security forces.

According to Amnesty International, the women and girls were arrested:

“without arrest orders, interrogated without lawyers present and some of them reportedly tortured or ill-treated….the detainees have not had contact with their families or adequate  access to legal counsel and the authorities have reportedly not given them food or allowed them to pray.”

Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa says that:

“It appears that Bahrain’s authorities have patently denied these women their rights after rounding them up.”

Lawyers who refused to leave after attempting to gain access to the detained womenmanaged to speak to some of them and heard reports that many had been beaten.

According to Amnesty, one woman, Nour al-Ghasia, aged 20 years, had bruises on her face “apparently from ill treatment in custody”.

The women continue to be held at a women’s detention centre outside the capital and have been order to be detained for 45 days pending investigation.

Women are involved in these uprisings as a core part of the broader resistance movement, much of which is not widely reported in the mainstream press.

As readers and writers, it is our responsibility to make sure they are not forgotten and that their voices are heard.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights lists over 1000 people detained as a result of the regime’s crackdown on recent protests, 100 of whom are women.

Among them are “teachers, lawyers, bloggers, doctors, poets, artists, photographers and activists, dissidents, human rights activists and members of political societies”.

The youngest known protester being detained is only 12 years old.

You can follow ongoing coverage of the Bahrain protests through the  Breaking News website, visiting the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and by following the Twitter hashtag #lulureturn and activist Maryam Al-Khawaya on Twitter.

In support of the protesters in Bahrain – women and men – I strongly urge you to do so. Now.

  1. I give you a pen to write, you use it wisely to write the truth and not to write and elaborate on rumors!!

    Good Luck with that! 😀

    Women in Bahrain have more rights than women in any country! A woman’s word is always taken seriously and men are punished for any crimes against her. This is Bahrain. I am not a Bahraini, but I as a woman feel safer in this country than in my own.

    If you have lived here and experienced this place, and someone wrote the above, you would spit at them!

    Anyways, nice try Sarah Cheverton!

    The government hasn’t given anything to me for commenting here and neither will they in future but I feel so angry with the ungrateful people and that is why I am commenting!

  2. With all due respect, Bahraini officials are mainly interested in maintaining a public image while committing egregious human rights violations.

    The arrest, torture and recent convictions of medical professionals who were saving lives during the protests is a clear indication of that.

    Still, hopefully they can win an appeal, inshallah.

    I suppose they must be a very ungrateful lot, those doctors.

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