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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Tortured Justice Part Two Tortured Justice Bahrain’s leaders talk a good game about reform, but protesters in the streets still face unremitting brutality. BY BRIAN DOOLEY | MARCH 22, 2012 For many in Bahrain, talk of reform and a commitment to changing the government from within sounds absurd. For them, police behavior appears not to have changed at all, except that officers have sometimes taken the torture out of the police stations and into other buildings -- although even that is not a hard and fast rule. One 16 year-old boy told me how he and his friends were arrested in mid-February and beaten for several days in the Naim Police Station, north of Manama. Meanwhile, the government is still vigorously pressing charges against people convicted as part of the crackdown -- including, notoriously, 20 medics who treated injured protestors. Despite the ongoing abuses in Bahrain, the U.S. government has only temporarily paused a $53 million arms sale to the kingdom -- a deal that includes 44 Humvees of the type used to crush the pro-democracy protests last year. The sale has not been cancelled, just delayed, while the administration waits for an appropriate time to resume it. This is hardly the moment. Bahrain's government has lost control of the reform process, sending incoherent and contradictory signals about its progress. One Bahraini official announced last week a deal whereby 15 of the 20 medics being prosecuted would have charges against them dropped. But the deal was denied a few days later at their next court hearing. While the regime has allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross into its prisons, it called off last week's planned visit by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez, postponing it for several months. Bahrain's top leadership also continues to traffic in conspiracy theories about foreign-backed plots to overthrow the government, rather than lay the blame for the domestic unrest on their own unrepresentative rule. Field Marshall Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, the commander in chief of the Bahrain Defence Forces (BDF), was quoted in the local press on Feb. 15 as saying a vast array of countries had "mobilized their media, embassies, agents and fifth columns in the Gulf" against Bahrain's government. He is quoted in the report as identifying the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and Belgium as part of the conspiracy. It is presumably into this field marshall's safe hands -- as head of the BDF -- that the $53 million worth of U.S. weapons will be delivered. Real reform must include a genuine change in police actions. More than 160 policemen were convicted by Bahrain's military court last year for refusing to join the crackdown. They were each sentenced to between four and 12 years in prison. Dropping charges against them -- and all the others convicted by the sham military court -- would be a start to restoring confidence. So would bringing an immediate halt to torture, and establishing a mechanism to video record all police interrogations, a step recommended by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry last year. An initiative to install high-tech closed circuit televisions into all police stations has apparently begun, but will take many more months to complete. Using even ordinary camcorders until then would send a positive signal of intent. Bringing more Shiites, who constitute the demographic majority in Bahrain, into the overwhelmingly Sunni police force is also a longer-term necessity. But despite chronic unemployment in the villages, there is little incentive for young Shiites to apply. My suggestion to the young men I met that they might one day join the police was met with uproarious laughter. As one of them told me, "The police are killing people, not protecting them." PR Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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