MANAMA, Bahrain
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
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Nicholas D. Kristof From a Hospital in Bahrain Back Story With Nicholas D. Kristof in BahrainRelated in Opinion
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Op-Ed Columnist: Tunisia. Egypt. Bahrain? (February 17, 2011)
This kind of brutal repression is normally confined to remote and backward nations, but this is Bahrain. An international banking center. The home of an important American naval base, the Fifth Fleet. A wealthy and well-educated nation with a large middle class and cosmopolitan values.
To be here and see corpses of protesters with gunshot wounds, to hear an eyewitness account of an execution of a handcuffed protester, to interview paramedics who say they were beaten for trying to treat the injured — yes, all that just breaks my heart.
So here’s what happened.
The pro-democracy movement has bubbled for decades in Bahrain, but it found new strength after the overthrow of the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. Then the Bahrain government attacked the protesters early this week with stunning brutality, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and shotgun pellets at small groups of peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Two demonstrators were killed (one while walking in a funeral procession), and widespread public outrage gave a huge boost to the democracy movement.
King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa initially pulled the police back, but early on Thursday morning he sent in the riot police, who went in with guns blazing. Bahrain television has claimed that the protesters were armed with swords and threatening security. That’s preposterous. I was on the roundabout earlier that night and saw many thousands of people, including large numbers of women and children, even babies. Many were asleep.
I was not there at the time of the attack, but afterward, at the main hospital (one of at least three to receive casualties), I saw the effects. More than 600 people were treated with injuries, overwhelmingly men but including small numbers of women and children.
One nurse told me that she was on the roundabout, known as Pearl Square, and saw a young man of about 24, handcuffed and then beaten by a group of police. She said she then watched as they executed him at point-blank range with a gun. The nurse told me her name, but I will not use full names of some people in this column to avoid putting them at greater risk.
I met one doctor, Sadiq al-Ekri, who was lying in a hospital bed with a broken nose and injuries to his eyes and almost his entire body. He couldn’t speak to me because he was still unconscious and on oxygen after what colleagues and his family described as a savage beating by riot police who were outraged that he was treating people at the roundabout.
Dr. Ekri, a distinguished plastic surgeon, had just returned from a trip to Houston. He identified himself as a physician to the riot police, according to other doctors and family members, based partly on what Dr. Ekri, 44, told them before he lost consciousness. But then, they said, the riot police handcuffed him and began beating him with sticks and kicking him while shouting insults against Shiites. Finally, they said, the police pulled down his pants and threatened to rape him, although that idea was abandoned and an ambulance eventually was allowed to rescue him.
“He went to help people,” said his father, who was at the bedside. “It’s his duty to help people. And then this happened.”
Three ambulance drivers or paramedics told me that they had been pulled out of their ambulances and beaten by the police. One, Jameel, whose head was bandaged and his arm was in a cast, told me that police had clubbed him and that a senior officer had then told him: “If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
A fourth ambulance driver, Osama, was unhurt but said that a military officer — who he said he believed to be a Saudi, based on his accent in Arabic — held a gun to his head and warned him to drive away or be shot. (By many accounts, Saudi tanks and other military forces participated in the attack, but I can’t verify that).
The hospital staff told me that ambulance service has now been frozen, with no ambulances going out on calls except with approval of the Interior Ministry.
Some of the victims, though not all, said that the riot police shouted anti-Shiite curses when they attacked the protesters, who were overwhelmingly Shiite. Sectarianism is particularly delicate in Bahrain because the Sunni royal family, the Khalifas, presides over a country that is predominately Shiite, and Shiites often complain of discrimination by the government.
Hospital corridors were also full of frantic mothers searching desperately for children who had gone missing in the attack.
In the hospital mortuary, I found three corpses with gunshot wounds. One man had much of his head blown off with what mortuary staff said was a gunshot wound. Ahmed Abutaki, a 29-year-old laborer, stood by the body of his 22-year-old brother, Mahmood, who died of a shotgun blast.
Ahmed said he blamed King Hamad, and many other protesters at the hospital were also demanding the ouster of the king. I think he has a point. When a king opens fire on his people, he no longer deserves to be ruler. That might be the only way to purge this land of ineffable heartbreak.
What's Happening in Bahrain: Explained
| Fri Feb. 18, 2011 8:45 AM PST
An injured protester is wheeled into a hospital in Manama, Bahrain on Feb. 17. Nabeel Rajab, a persecuted activist who directs the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, has spent the week dodging tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition as a leader of Bahrain's pro-democracy uprisings. "People are very shocked that the king has ordered his troops to kill the people," he told Mother Jones in a Friday morning phone interview while leaving the funeral of a murdered protester. "It's a sad time. I fear things are going to deteriorate."
What follows is an overview of what's brought Rajab and up to 10,000 other demonstrators onto the streets of this Gulf island—and led to Friday's brutal crackdown.
Bahrain at a Glance
Bahrain is home to 1.3 million people and located off the coast of Saudi Arabia. It has been ruled by the Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa family for more than 200 years. Bahrain receives military aid from the US, provides logistical support for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet. Its oil-driven economy has created concentrated wealth, particularly in Bahrain's liberal, cosmopolitan capital city of Manama.
Yet the glitz and glamour of Manama’s skyscrapers and shopping malls mask the country's grinding poverty and deep sectarian divides. The nation's residential communities are starkly segregated— Sunni Muslims, westerners, Shiite Muslims, and South Asian migrant workers (who are not citizens but constitute almost half of Bahrain’s population) generally live in separate neighborhoods. The impoverished villages and slums surrounding Manama almost exclusively house Shiites. Shiites are culturally and ethnically distinct from Sunnis, and hold different interpretations of their Islamic faith. The majority—around 70 percent—of Bahrain's citizens are Shiites.
Although some sympathetic, progressive Sunni Muslims are participating in the current uprisings, the vast majority of protesters are Shiites. (A small fraction, including Rajab, are of mixed Sunni and Shiite background.)
What sparked Bahrain’s uprisings?
The Feb. 14 "day of rage" launched via Facebook by Bahraini youth was, of course, inspired by the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. However, anger among Shiites in Bahrain had been bubbling for decades. For the past several years, Shiite youth in outlying villages have organized small scale protest riots that garnered little media attention.
In the early 2000s, some Shiite exiles returned to Bahrain after a new king instituted democratic reforms, including elections for a parliamentary advisory council. A few years later, however, the government resumed its aggressive censorship, intimidation, and torture of regime critics, most of whom are Shiite. One Sunni critic, women’s rights activist Ghada Jamsheer, was put under media blackout by the Bahraini government after blasting the regime’s Sharia'a courts in the Arab media. Time Magazine honored her as one of four "heroes of freedom" in the Arab world.
In the later half of 2010, the Bahraini government escalated is suppression of civil society. Authorities reportedly detained about 250 people, used torture to extract "terrorism" confessions, and closed numerous websites, publications, and non-profits that had criticized the government—including Rajab’s Bahrain Center for Human Rights. "All the time there are articles describing me as a traitor or a terrorist," says Rajab. "For a human rights activist here, this is the environment."
Faraz Sanei, a Bahrain specialist for Human Rights Watch, says that Rajab's experience is part of a troubling trend. "There are very few independent human rights organizations in Bahrain today," he said. "Most are essentially pro-government and are very close to the government."
What do demonstrators want?
Earlier this week, Bahrain's protesters were clamoring for equal political and legal rights, as well as protections against job discrimination. However, following the government’s lethal suppression, the protesters have hardened their demands. "Now they want to change the whole regime, instead of having reforms," says Rajab. "I don’t know how we can accept a leader who killed his own people."
How is this similar / different from Tunisia and Egypt?
In Egypt and Tunisia, Sunnis make up the vast majority of the population, and no major sectarian conflict drove the protests. Secularists, Islamists, Christians, the poor, the middle class, the wealthy, and ultimately even the army united against dictatorship. So far, the protesters in Bahrain have been overwhelmingly Shiite. Bahrain’s military is overwhelmingly Sunni and many of its soldiers harbor racist prejudices against Shiites. Bahrain arguably has much more in common with Iraq, a country with similarly stark divides between Sunni and Shiite communities.
What are the strategic implications for the US?
Bahrain's western and Saudi allies fear that, if the Shiite majority gain full control of the government, this could strengthen their adversaries in Shiite-ruled Iran. (Shiites constitute a majority of citizens in only three countries: Iran, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan.) Wikileaks cables revealed that Saudi and Bahraini leaders urged US officials to take military action against Iran's nuclear program. The US considers its Fifth Fleet, which is hosted by Bahrain, to be an important counterbalance to Iran. Some Bahrainis have alleged that Saudi troops are helping to put down the uprisings.
On the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Bahrain three months ago, Bahraini human rights organizations co-authored an open letter urging her to denounce the government’s escalating human rights abuses. (Rajab was one of the signers on the letter.) Clinton, however, chose not to publicly condemn a staunch US ally.
How do I follow what's happening in Bahrain?
- Reporting and Analysis: The single best source for up-to-the-minute news is Al-Jazeera's live blog from Bahrain. Also check out Nick Kristof’s gripping columns, videos, and blog posts. And be sure to follow the ongoing humanitarian investigations of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
- Twitter: The Twitter feed of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights compiles news from various media outlets and individuals. Also keep an eye on the tweets of Mohammed Al-Maskati, president of the Bahrain Youth Society, and Thomas Mead, a New Zealand-based blogger collecting and retweeting accounts from eyewitnesses in Bahrain. For an anti-protester version of events, check out the stilted tweets of Bahraini state television.
- Live Video: The BBC and Al-Jazeera are both running round the clock coverage of protests in Bahrain and across the Middle East.
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