The imprisonment of Nabeel Rajab is a sobering reminder of the struggle in Bahrain
The Bahraini human rights activist has been jailed for three years for taking part in "illegal gatherings".
By Samira Shackle Published 17 August 2012 14:26
Much was made of the importance of Twitter during the Arab Spring. Few people made better use of it than Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab. The authorities in his home country are well aware of the power he wields on social media: he is currently serving a three-month sentence after calling for the prime minister to step down on Twitter. Today, he was sentenced to a further three years in jail for attending an “illegal demonstration”.
I interviewed Rajab earlier this year when he visited London, and he explained that Twitter is invaluable when all other media is controlled by the state. He proudly told me that he was the number one Tweeter in Bahrain, and number four in the Arab world, and that in the preceding six months, he had been interrogated three times – all of them regarding his Twitter account. His sentencing today is a sobering reminder of how far tyrannical regimes will go to suppress freedom of speech.
Amnesty International has described it as a “dark day for justice in Bahrain”, saying that Rajab is a prisoner of conscience. Indeed, it is difficult to see his incredibly punitive sentencing in any other light. As one of the country's most long-standing and prominent human rights activists, often seen in the western media, the regime clearly wants him out of the way.
Yet Rajab’s sentencing also throws light on the continued struggle in Bahrain. So far, more than 70 people have been killed in 18 months of protests, which have seen a brutal crackdown against protesters and troops being sent in from neighbouring Saudi Arabia. When we spoke in April, Rajab expressed frustration that the western media were largely ignoring the situation in Bahrain.
Relatives present in the court said that Rajab shouted “three years or 30, you cannot stop me” as his sentence was read out in court. It shows characteristic resilience. When I asked him whether he feared for his safety, he answered:
“I think I've passed that stage. My family used to get worried at the beginning but they know the size of the goal we are fighting for. My life is in danger, but I have my obligations and my business in order so that tomorrow if they kill me, there won’t be any problems for my family.”
With his lawyers readying an appeal, let’s hope he regains his freedom – though it looks like there is minimal hope of a fair trial.
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12 comments
He's a self-serving publicity hound funded by Hezbollah, so fuck him.
Why else do you think he makes frequent trips to Beirut? For the Duty Free?
Of all the people deserving of mention in every corner of the turd world this joker deserves the least respect, there's looking at you kid play it again sam!!!!!
Of all the people deserving of mention in every corner of the turd world this joker deserves the least respect, there's looking at you kid play it again sam!!!!!
Who the f.ck is Nabeel Rajab? and who gives a f.ck who Nabeel Rajab is?
There appears to be a concerted effort by Islamists to divert liberal western attention away from the grotesque human rights abuses perpetrated by Moslems against Moslems in apartheid Pakistan ( mass killing of Shiites outside Karachi)
Iraq Shiite and Sunni fanatics suicide bombing each others funeral processions
Afghanistan - Taliban suicide bomber butchering 46 Moslems in a Kabul market
Syria - mass murder by the Baathist fascists and Islamist terrorists on their own populations
Egypt- butchery and apartheid imposed on Copts
Gaza- the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christians and Palestinian gays
Sudan - mass murder of non-Moslem blacks
Turkey - savage persecution/mass murder/apartheid on its indigenous Kurdish populations
pathological anti-semitism that infects each Moslem state
and onto this tiny island of Bahrain which is the nearest thing the Arab Moslem world has to a western liberal democracy.
I wonder why?
and woosh the entire article flew over your tiny head Coleridge.
and i see you still have 'issues'. to say the least....
Hey jackass back from your hols? So how was Abbottabad? Find any good women to stone? Pork any corpses?
There appears to be a concerted effort by Islamists to divert liberal western attention away from the grotesque human rights abuses perpetrated by Moslems against Moslems in apartheid Pakistan ( mass killing of Shiites outside Karachi)
Iraq Shiite and Sunni fanatics suicide bombing each others funeral processions
Afghanistan - Taliban suicide bomber butchering 46 Moslems in a Kabul market
Syria - mass murder by the Baathist fascists and Islamist terrorists on their own populations
Egypt- butchery and apartheid imposed on Copts
Gaza- the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christians and Palestinian gays
Sudan - mass murder of non-Moslem blacks
Turkey - savage persecution/mass murder/apartheid on its indigenous Kurdish populations
pathological anti-semitism that infects each Moslem state
and onto this tiny island of Bahrain which is the nearest thing the Arab Moslem world has to a western liberal democracy.
I wonder why?
In addition to those who have arrived in the last 40 years or so, Bahrain has at least eight indigenous ethnic groups, including a small but very ancient and entrenched Jewish community which maintains the Gulf's only synagogue and Jewish cemetery, and also including a community of black African descent, part of the East African diaspora in the East hardly known about by those very used to the West African diaspora in the West. Around one fifth of the inhabitants of Bahrain is non-Muslim, and around half of that is Christian. The women's headscarf is strictly optional. No one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are two-thirds Shi'ite. Correspondingly, no one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are one-third Sunni.
All legislation requires the approval of both Houses of Parliament, and, while one of those Houses is entirely appointed by the monarch (as in Britain or Canada), the other is entirely elected by universal suffrage. The Upper House, to which women are regularly appointed to make up for their dearth in the elected Lower House, includes a Jewish man and a Christian woman; the latter was the first woman ever to chair a Parliament in the Arab world. The Ambassador to the United States is a Jewish woman, the first Jewish ambassador of any modern Arab state, although the third woman to be an Ambassador of Bahrain. She was previously an elected parliamentarian. Notably, she describes her Jewish identity as unconnected, either to the State of Israel, which Bahrain does not recognise, or to the Holocaust, of which she knew nothing until she was 14.
Her British higher education and British husband, as well as the fact that the synagogue brings in its rabbis from Britain, point to the very close ties indeed between that country and this. We installed the Al Khalifa (that is not a solecism - it is Al Khalifa, not al-Khalifa) in 1783, and they have done everything to keep up the link ever since. Saudi Arabia is America's, and really so is Kuwait, which had only brief ties to Imperial Britain, and those only towards the end; we more or less said "good riddance" to the place as early as 1961. Yemen is, to say the least, complicated. But from Bahrain, via Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to Oman is Britain's natural and longstanding sphere of influence, as their rulers would and do tell you. It is beyond me why they are not in the Commonwealth. Of course the King of Bahrain was invited to the Royal Wedding, and of course he should have attended it as an honoured guest.
I do not welcome the Saudi intervention in Bahrain. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I have no wish to see a Wahhabisation of Bahraini Sunnism, since at present all of the above is perfectly acceptable even to the Salafi Members of Parliament. But which part of it do the demonstrators wish to conserve? Do they wish to conserve any of it? Or do they wish to overthrow it in order to replace it with something else entirely? We have not asked. We never do. It is very high time that we did.
In addition to those who have arrived in the last 40 years or so, Bahrain has at least eight indigenous ethnic groups, including a small but very ancient and entrenched Jewish community which maintains the Gulf's only synagogue and Jewish cemetery, and also including a community of black African descent, part of the East African diaspora in the East hardly known about by those very used to the West African diaspora in the West. Around one fifth of the inhabitants of Bahrain is non-Muslim, and around half of that is Christian. The women's headscarf is strictly optional. No one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are two-thirds Shi'ite. Correspondingly, no one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are one-third Sunni.
All legislation requires the approval of both Houses of Parliament, and, while one of those Houses is entirely appointed by the monarch (as in Britain or Canada), the other is entirely elected by universal suffrage. The Upper House, to which women are regularly appointed to make up for their dearth in the elected Lower House, includes a Jewish man and a Christian woman; the latter was the first woman ever to chair a Parliament in the Arab world. The Ambassador to the United States is a Jewish woman, the first Jewish ambassador of any modern Arab state, although the third woman to be an Ambassador of Bahrain. She was previously an elected parliamentarian. Notably, she describes her Jewish identity as unconnected, either to the State of Israel, which Bahrain does not recognise, or to the Holocaust, of which she knew nothing until she was 14.
Her British higher education and British husband, as well as the fact that the synagogue brings in its rabbis from Britain, point to the very close ties indeed between that country and this. We installed the Al Khalifa (that is not a solecism - it is Al Khalifa, not al-Khalifa) in 1783, and they have done everything to keep up the link ever since. Saudi Arabia is America's, and really so is Kuwait, which had only brief ties to Imperial Britain, and those only towards the end; we more or less said "good riddance" to the place as early as 1961. Yemen is, to say the least, complicated. But from Bahrain, via Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to Oman is Britain's natural and longstanding sphere of influence, as their rulers would and do tell you. It is beyond me why they are not in the Commonwealth. Of course the King of Bahrain has been invited to the Royal Wedding, and of course he should attend it as an honoured guest.
I do not welcome the Saudi intervention in Bahrain. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I have no wish to see a Wahhabisation of Bahraini Sunnism, since at present all of the above is perfectly acceptable even to the Salafi Members of Parliament. But which part of it do the demonstrators wish to conserve? Do they wish to conserve any of it? Or do they wish to overthrow it in order to replace it with something else entirely? We have not asked. We never do. It is very high time that we did.
Any intervention on religious grounds is bound to result in yet more strife. Religion and politics are a volitile mixture and personally I think that anyone who holds religion above politics is going to create a bigger mess. They should be barred from any position of power. All this talk oif Muslim, Sunni Shi'ite Arawak etc - feck '#em, It is the cause of too many problems in the world when we already have so many.
many of us are working towards the same goals. - which is 'I think your views make you cuntish but I'll defend to the death the fact that you can express that view.''
Choice and freedom to make that choice are the hallmarks of democracy. Maybe 30 years on Bob Dylans 'The times are changing '' might actually come to fruition.