Bahrain Appaling Human Rights 12 Years After Uprising. Godless West's 'Expendable' State
Channel: NOT The BCfm Politics Show, Bristol, UK
Date: 2023-02-15

February 14 marks the anniversary of the Bahraini revolution. This was one of the first revolutions of the Persian Gulf Arab Countries, which is still evolving today. From the harsh crackdowns to kangaroo courts, to torture and mass arrests, the regime has crushed any form of opposition. So why does the revolution continue, and why doesn’t it lead to the removal of the ruling Al Khalifa regime? In this edition of the Spotlight, we will look at the Bahraini revolution and see whether the opposition has any chance of taking this revolution to the next level.

Bahrain: Shouting in the dark | Featured Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaTKDMYOBOU

Bahrain: An island kingdom in the Arabian Gulf where the Shia Muslim majority are ruled by a family from the Sunni minority. Where people fighting for democratic rights broke the barriers of fear, only to find themselves alone and crushed. 
This is their story and Al Jazeera is their witness - the only TV journalists who remained to follow their journey of hope to the carnage that followed. 
This is the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world.
Editor's note: This documentary won the Award for Best International Television and the Grand Prize at the Robert F.Kennedy Journalism Awards, The Amnesty International Media Award, a Gold Nymphe (Nymphe d'Or) for Best Documentary at the Montecarlo Television Festival, the Foreign Press Association Documentary of the Year award in London, the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Scripps Howard Jack R. Howard Award for Television Reporting

Bahrain's Government Cannot Bury the Legacy of the 2011 Uprising
February 14, 2023 - in Democracy In Exile

https://dawnmena.org/bahrains-government-cannot-bury-the-legacy-of-the-2011-uprising/

Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei is the director of advocacy at the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD). He has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Exactly twelve years ago, after witnessing the downfall of autocrats in both Egypt and Tunisia, Bahrainis were inspired to begin their own chapter of the Arab uprisings. The pro-democracy movement that took to the streets on Feb. 14, 2011 challenged over two centuries of despotic rule by the Al Khalifa monarchy, which ran the state as their own family business, holding all power and wealth in their hands.

The uprising in Bahrain was among the most popular in terms of participation of the entire Arab Spring, with more than 150,000 protesters taking to the streets at its peak to demand democratic change in a country with a population of less than 600,000 Bahraini citizens. One quarter of the entire population participated in the protests. This popular outcry represented the most serious threat to the Al Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain's modern history.

And yet it has since been forgotten by much of the outside world. Bahrain's uprising, calling for respect for human and democratic rights in the kingdom, was decidedly inconvenient for the United States, Bahrain's key Western ally, and the West as a whole. Although at the time President Barack Obama was vocally critical of other Arab dictators facing mass protests in the streets, like Mubarak in Egypt, the U.S. took a different position toward Bahrain, which hosts the Fifth Fleet of the U.S. Navy. Geopolitical calculations were deemed to be more important than the wishes of the Bahraini people.

When Bahrain's government met the widespread calls for change with a bloody crackdown by security forces, and then invited in Saudi troops to crush the protest movement, Washington went silent. The White House bought King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa's false promises of reform and "dialogue." And as Bahrain's prisons were filled with political dissidents whose torture became the norm, the Obama administration, followed by the Trump and now Biden administrations, stayed quiet. Twelve years on, what began as reprisals against a popular uprising has evolved into a sophisticated and deeply entrenched system of institutionalized repression.