FRI 29 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Mar 25, 2011
Source: The Daily Star
Bahrain continuing to crack down on Shiites: Amnesty

Friday, March 25, 2011

 

DUBAI: Amnesty International Thursday accused Bahrain of pressing on with a crackdown against Shiite activists and doctors, as Manama tried to fend off charges of foreign meddling in its affairs.
“A crackdown on Shiite opposition activists and doctors continues in Bahrain, with six more people detained in the past few days,” said the London-based rights watchdog.


“Amnesty believes they have been detained solely for their criticism of and involvement in the protests and that therefore they are prisoners of conscience,” the group said in a statement.
But the Sunni-ruled kingdom responded by slamming what it said was foreign interference and said that outside forces had hijacked the pro-reform demands of demonstrators.


“Bahrain condemns external interference in its domestic matters,” a government spokeswoman, Maysoon Sakba, said.
“Recent calls for reform by sections of the Bahraini people were hijacked by an extreme agenda, resulting in an escalation of more violent methods, leading to a fundamental breakdown in law and order,” she said in a statement.


Sakba said a March 16 raid on Salmaniya Medical Complex following violent clashes in Manama was aimed at restoring order after the medical staff had turned the hospital into a base for regrouping demonstrators.

Salmaniya is Bahrain’s largest public sector hospital and has been the focus of conflicting reports of abuse.


Bahraini authorities contend its Shiite staff had turned the complex into a protest center, while the international community has denounced the storming of the health facility by security forces.
Also Thursday, about a thousand protesters defied martial-type laws and staged protest in a Shiite village against the Sunni rulers’ monopoly on power in the Gulf country.
The demonstration took place in the village of Karzakan, 16 kilometers west of Manama.


Whole families attended. Men and women chanted slogans against the royal family and marched along, some carrying balloons.
Over the past week, a tense calm has returned to Manama, where clashes between security forces and protesters since Feb. 14 have killed at least 15 people, most of them demonstrators. – AFP, AP



 
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