Revolutie in Bahrein #2 Golflanden sturen troepen, Iran niet blij

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Op zaterdag 19 maart 2011 13:38 schreef nikk het volgende:

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De grap is wanneer de betogers winnen het alleen maar zal verslechteren. Toch mooi, demonstreren voor het recht om te zorgen voor minder rechten. Allah Akhbar.

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The UN has condemned the use of "shocking" violence by security forces to clear hundreds of anti-government demonstrators from their camp in the capital's Pearl Roundabout.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that there had been reports of "arbitrary arrests, killings, beatings of protesters and of medical personnel, and of the takeover of hospitals and medical centres by various security forces".

The violence follows the arrival of some 1,500 Saudi and UAE troops in Bahrain, at the invitation of Bahrain's ruling al-Khalifah family to help restore order in the tiny Gulf kingdom.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifah has declared a three-month state of emergency, giving security forces sweeping powers to arrest citizens.

The protests have been going on for a month, despite an offer from the Sunni Muslim monarchy for talks with representatives of the country's disaffected Shia majority.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 01:44 schreef meth1745 het volgende:

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Dit is toch al te gek, Men heeft maar enkele dagen nodig om Libië aan te vallen, maar in Bahrein komen andere landen de repressie steunen en daar wordt niks tegen gedaan.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 01:44 schreef meth1745 het volgende:

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Dit is toch al te gek, Men heeft maar enkele dagen nodig om Libië aan te vallen, maar in Bahrein komen andere landen de repressie steunen en daar wordt niks tegen gedaan.

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Op zaterdag 19 maart 2011 13:57 schreef Hans_van_Baalen het volgende:

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http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)s-under-siege-manama

Bahrain's two main hospitals remain surrounded by masked soldiers despite demands from America that the kingdom must ease its violent crackdown on demonstrators and the medical workers treating them.

Soldiers also continue to patrol all main roads in the capital Manama and have cordoned off access to the former hub of the protest movement, Pearl Roundabout, which was destroyed under government orders on Friday, denying the restive demonstrators a focal point.

The tiny Gulf state has the feel of a nation under siege as it approaches a second week of martial law imposed for three months by its besieged rulers. In addition to the troop presence, neighbourhoods remain largely empty; large, glitzy shopping malls have been virtually abandoned and helicopters regularly buzz over the debris-strewn scenes of recent street clashes.

Hospitals, particularly the Salmaniya medical clinic near the centre of town, have received extra attention, largely because of the significance they have taken on since the protests began in January.

As well as being used to treat hundreds of casualties, nearly all of them unarmed protesters, the hospitals served as rallying points for protesters, who took refuge from riot police in the relative safety of their grounds.

Salmaniya was one of several hospitals attacked by security forces during the week. Their entrances clearly show scuffs from rubber bullets and teargas canisters, as well as sound grenades were found well inside hospital grounds.

Images of thousands of protesters, joined by doctors with bullhorns and outraged ambulance drivers, lionised the anti-government movement and contributed greatly to the regime's public relations woes outside Bahrain.

Several doctors have been arrested, among them a leading surgeon, Ali al-Ikri, who has been accused of having contact with foreign agents. Others claim to have been intimidated by security forces and prevented from leaving their homes.

"I live in a neighbourhood surrounded by colonels and senior officers," said one doctor, who did not want to give her name. "If I go out I will be followed. There is a real risk to my safety and those of my colleagues. I have been prevented from returning to work. When I left the hospital, it was in utter chaos."

Kuwait is to send a medical team of 40 specialists to be deployed inside the hospitals as the government looks for new ways to manage the vehement anti-regime movement.

"This is about us being sidelined and them getting in people who will stay on message," said another doctor. "I know for a fact that the wards will be tidied up and some of the patients moved. The Kuwaitis will report back in good faith that all is in order and that will be the official narrative."

The US state department demanded on Friday that attacks on hospitals stop. "We call on security forces to cease violence, particularly on medical facilities and personnel," it said.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the solution to the country's crisis could only come through political dialogue. "We have made clear that security alone cannot resolve the challenges facing Bahrain," Clinton told reporters in Paris. "Violence is not the answer; a political process is."

In the face of sustained international criticism, the strategy of the ruling dynasty has been to make Bahrain's crisis a regional problem, by inviting Gulf forces into the kingdom. Hundreds of troops from the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council alliance were dispatched to Bahrain last week. Qatar said it had deployed troops and Kuwait has sent navy ships to patrol waters near Bahrain, where a maritime curfew has been ordered from 6pm-6am.

However, Saudi Arabia continues to take a regional lead in the crisis, insisting on a hard line against the predominantly Shia Muslim protesters who have defied the authority of the Riyadh-backed Sunni dynasty for two deeply destabilising months.

Regional repercussions continue, though, with new demonstrations in Iraq on Saturday against the Saudi role and strident criticism from Shia Islamic clerics, which have sharply raised the sectarian stakes in Bahrain, a majority Shia Muslim state.

At least 70% of Bahrainis are Shias. The establishment, however, is almost exclusively Sunni. The Shias have long complained that the status quo discriminates against them, denying them opportunities and access to decision-making.

"We are not waging war," said Bahrain's foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid bin-Ahmed al-Khalifa. "We are restoring law and order. It is a very volatile situation and in volatile situations you expect violence to happen."

A fourth Bahraini protester died on Saturday from wounds he suffered earlier in the week.

Relatives of another victim, IT technician Ahmed Farhan, said they saw him being executed as he lay prostrate on a street in the suburb of Sitra.

"They killed him in cold blood," said Ali Hassan Ali, a physical education teacher. "I was standing near him when he was shot. He fell, they chased us away and shot him in the head at point-blank rage with a bird-shot gun."

The victim's injuries were consistent with being shot in the head from close range.

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Oppositie Bahrein vraagt VN en VS om hulp

MANAMAH, 20 maart De oppositie in Bahrein heeft zondag tijdens een kortstondige demonstratie in de hoofdstad Manamah de Verenigde Naties en de Verenigde Staten om hulp gevraagd. De demonstranten gingen uiteen voordat de veiligheidstroepen konden ingrijpen.

De achttien parlementsleden die de oppositie vertegenwoordigen demonstreerden voor het gebouw van de VN in Manamah. De parlementsleden zijn vorige maand afgetreden uit protest tegen het geweld dat de koning van Bahrein heeft ingezet tegen de demonstranten in zijn land. De koning kondigde vorig week de staat van beleg af, en een troepenmacht van Golfstaten onder leiding van Saudi-Arabië is week het land binnengetrokken om het soennitische koningshuis te ondersteunen.

Bemiddelen
Tijdens de demonstratie, die slechts vijf minuten duurde, riepen de parlementariërs de VN op om het geweld tegen demonstranten te stoppen en te bemiddelen in gesprekken tussen de oppositie en de monarchie. Ze vroegen de VS druk uit te oefenen op de troepenmacht om hen te bewegen te vertrekken. 'Ze moeten naar huis gaan. Ze zijn hier niet nodig. Dit is een politiek probleem, geen militair probleem', aldus een van de parlementariërs.

De troepenmacht van de Golfstaten onderschrijft de zorgen die er in de andere Golfstaten leven over de demonstraties in Bahrein. De andere soennitische regimes in de regio zijn bang dat de onrust overslaat naar hun land, en zijn bang dat dit kan leiden tot een toenemende invloed van het sjiitische regime in Iran.

Gelijke rechtten
De oppositie eist gelijke rechten voor de sjiitische meerderheid in het land, die in haar ogen systematisch gediscrimineerd wordt door de soennitische minderheid die het land regeert.

De VS hebben het geweld in Bahrein veroordeeld. Algemeen stafchef admiraal Mike Mullen waarschuwt echter voor een eventueel Amerikaans ingrijpen. 'Ik denk dat we heel voorzichtig moeten zijn, en elk land in het Midden-Oosten apart beoordelen', aldus Mullen. 'De situaties in Libië en Bahrein zijn totaal verschillend. Bahrein is bijvoorbeeld al decennia een bondgenoot van de VS. We zijn hard aan het werk om een vreedzame resolutie van het conflict in Bahrein te bewerkstelligen.'

Druk
De autoriteiten in Bahrein voeren de druk op politieke activisten en andere tegenstanders van het regime op. Mensenrechtenactivisten worden verhoord, en artsen die tijdens de protesten demonstranten hebben geholpen zijn opgepakt.

Tot nu toe zijn er ten minste dertien mensen om het leven gekomen bij de protesten in Bahrein.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 02:47 schreef Baghdaddy het volgende:
Bemoeit Moqtada zich nou echt hier mee? Rot toch op.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:47 schreef Baghdaddy het volgende:
Bahrain is net te goede vrieden met het Westen, ik denk dat de Bahreini's dit zelf moeten oplossen.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 02:20 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

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Enkele dagen, ja hoor Het heeft WEKEN geduurd voordat men eindelijk vandaag actie is gaan ondernemen tegen Khadaffi. De situatie in Bahrein is pas een paar dagen geleden zo verslechterd.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Dus Bahreini's mogen wel massaal vermoord worden?

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Dus Bahreini's mogen wel massaal vermoord worden?

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:48 schreef ChristianLebaneseFront het volgende:

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Muqtada al Sadr, Khamenei en Nasrallah. Leuke "vrienden" hebben ze.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Dus Bahreini's mogen wel massaal vermoord worden?

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:51 schreef ChristianLebaneseFront het volgende:

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Overdrijven is ook een vak.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:50 schreef HiZ het volgende:

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Het geeft een wat ongemakkelijk gevoel dat Bahrein zo anders wordt behandeld natuurlijk, maar politie-kogels en hardhandig orde handhaven is wat anders dan je volk met genocide bedreigen en beginnen met de uitvoering.

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Bahrain on the Edge
The rulers of Bahrain are having to become used to greater scrutiny of the way they govern their tiny Persian Gulf kingdom. The approach of a parliamentary election on 23 October 2010 is one reason for a flurry of reports and articles about the countrys political life. But what this closer look has uncovered - including hundreds of dissenters behind bars, and widespread accounts of torture - should be of interest to far more than political analysts.

The Al-Khalifa monarchs, whose fiefdom the island state of Bahrain is, present themselves as the guardians of a nascent democracy. This is strictly a facade. True, the embattled sheikhs have in recent years had little choice but to allow a limited political opening. What lies behind this concession, however, are difficult economic conditions (declining oil reserves, a growing inability to placate citizens via handouts and public-sector employment, a widening gap between rich and poor). Moreover, the state's tactical shift is combined with some of the pathologies associated with an authoritarian regime (including minimal transparency, pervasive corruption, and the instinct to suppress an increasingly organised and vocal opposition). In these circumstances, any illusion of Bahraini democracy is rapidly being dispelled.
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There are indeed serious tensions between Bahrains Shia and the ruling Sunni minority. But what is happening in Bahrain can no longer be plausibly presented as what the Al-Khalifa - and the extensive international media campaign now underway - seek to make you believe it is: a sectarian clash.In fact, neither a great Sunni-Shia conflict nor an Iranian conspiracy is responsible for Bahrains unrest. Its core is rather a genuine popular movement against the injustices and abuses perpetrated by an outdated regime. And this movement has support from across Bahraini society, with the poorer Shia community understandably forming much of its backbone.
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Bahrains problems are not unique in the region, and residents of neighbouring Gulf monarchies also need to pay close attention to what is happening there. All six of these states share similar political structures and political cultures, and in many ways Bahrain could be a portent for their collective future.

A regime that is unable to keep distributing wealth and maintain its population in a depoliticised condition, and sees repression as its only recourse, represents a model that the other sheikh-dominated regimes will have to face in the coming post-oil decades.

But the future could come sooner than that. Kuwaits rulers are already entrenching themselves against political opposition and reversing many of the political openings of the last decade; discontent is spreading in the poorer, largely disenfranchised parts of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that live in the shadow of Abu Dhabi and Dubai; and the exploding youthful demographic in Saudi Arabia is demonstrating an unwillingness to live by the old rules.

In such a highly charged environment an implosion in Bahrain might not be contained within the islands shores, and could provide a catalyst for a much greater wave of regional unrest.

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:57 schreef waht het volgende:
Artikel uit oktober vorig jaar:

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Op zondag 20 maart 2011 23:57 schreef waht het volgende:
Artikel uit oktober vorig jaar:

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Op maandag 21 maart 2011 02:55 schreef Athlon_2o0o het volgende:
Conclusie: hij heeft gelijk gehad.

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John Winsell Davies, fondsbeheerder bij Wermuth Asset Management, merkt op dat er een gevaarlijke situatie is ontstaan in het Midden-Oosten. Hij weigert echter om de protestacties in de verschillende landen over dezelfde kam te scheren.

In Jemen heeft het westen alle redenen om de zittende regering te verdedigen, want die vormt een belangrijke bondgenoot van de Verenigde Staten in de strijd tegen al-Qaeda.

Maar vooral de rol van Iran in de regio mag niet onderschat worden. In een aantal landen dreigt een strijd tussen soennieten en sjiieten, de twee overheersende strekkingen binnen, de Islam te ontstaan.

Iran kan de sjiitische jeugd in Bahrein verder radicaliseren. Mogelijk wordt een opstand nu neergeslagen, maar een tweede of een derde poging in een verdere toekomst zou wel eens succes worden. De tegenstelling tussen soennieten en sjiieten maakt van het Midden-Oosten een explosieve brandhaard.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)n-role-uprising-shia

Bahrain's king has blamed a foreign plot for the nation's unrest, using veiled language to accuse Iran of fomenting an uprising by the Shia majority, in the Sunni-ruled island kingdom.

The Bahrain opposition's main demand is for a constitutional monarchy that would keep the royal family in power but would let people elect a government.

Inspired by mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt that toppled the two countries' presidents, it rejects accusations of influence by the Shia powerhouse across the Gulf.

"We don't want Iranians to come. We don't want a big problem in this small country," the senior opposition leader, Ali Salman, said on Sunday, adding that the solution to the country's crisis had to come from its people.

The king declared a three-month emergency rule and invited armies from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Sunni-ruled Gulf states to help quell unrest in Bahrain, the home of the US navy's 5th fleet.

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa praised the Saudi-led force and said: "Bahrain is bigger and stronger today than ever."

"I here announce the failure of the fomented subversive plot against security and stability," the king was quoted as saying by the state-run Bahrain news agency.

The king spoke to the commander of the Saudi-led force and said its troops gave Bahrain strength and confidence.

Iran has condemned the presence of the Gulf force in Bahrain and Shias across the Middle East have been outraged by the deadly crackdown of the protests, which have killed at least 13 people.