25th March 2013

BAHRAIN MEDIA ROUNDUP

US-ally Bahrain blocks medical ethics conference
Bahrain, where the monarchy has more or less successfully crushed democracy protests that broke out in the wake of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, is apparently not taking any chances by loosening the reigns on open discussion and debate. Yesterday, Doctors Without Borders (Mdecins Sans Frontires, MSF)said Bahrain's regime forced it to cancel a conference, two years in the planning, on medical ethics and conict. MSF Director of Operations Bart Janssens says the group had hoped to hold the regional conference in Bahrain because of the country's own recent experience with the politicization of medicine. Read More

Zainabs War: A mother risks everything for dignity

On Sunday, Zainab alKhawaja, a 29-year-old human rights activist and mother from the tiny and pro-American nation of Bahrain, did two things. First, she wrote an open letter, from prison, asking the U.S. to reconsider its support for the increasingly authoritarian Bahraini monarchy and imploring her fellow activists, frustrated by two years of mass

protest that had achieved some of the most meager gains of the Arab Spring, to never give up their commitment to nonviolence. Second, she stopped consuming liquids. Her father, Abdulhadi alKhawaja, a well-known activist and co-founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights who has been in prison since April 2011, had begun his own dry hunger strike a week earlier. Read More Khawaja, was on any form of hunger strike.

Jailed Bahraini activist on hunger strike for "dignity"

A jailed Bahraini rights activist who launched an open-ended hunger strike eight days ago after being denied visitation rights has published a letter explaining her actions. Zainab al-Khawaja, who is serving a six-month prison

sentence for insulting a police ofcer and participating in unsanctioned protests, began refusing food and water on March 17 after prison authorities prevented her from seeing her threeyear-old daughter, Jude. Authorities wanted to punish the political prisoner, she wrote, for refusing to be humiliated by wearing a jumpsuit. Read More repressive government, backing up the regime on all its key propaganda points.

Two jailed Bahraini activists refusing fluids in hunger strike: rights group
Two jailed activists on hunger strike in Bahrain are also refusing uids in protest at being denied visits from their family, a rights organization said on Monday. But the Bahraini government said Zainab alKhawaja was accepting uids and denied that her father, leading Shi'ite activist Abdulhadi al-

Bahrain, the base for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, has been in turmoil since 2011, when majority Shi'ite Muslims intensied demands for an end to the Sunni monarchy's political domination and for full powers for parliament. Zainab al-Khawaja was sentenced to three months in jail this month, accused of insulting a public ofcial, after an appeal court overturned her earlier acquittal. Read More

Warm words for Bahrain from British ambassador

Today's edition of the Gulf Daily News ("The Voice of Bahrain") contains no fewer than six stories based on an interview with Britain's skydiving ambassador, Iain Lindsay. In the form it is reported, the interview appears to be an almost unqualied endorsement of Bahrain's

It starts with a huge headline on Page 1: UK AMBASSADOR ACCUSES IRAN Here, ambassador Lindsay says there is "increasing evidence" of Iran "providing support to people here [in Bahrain] who are bent on violence". Read More