10th/ 11th November 2014

BAHRAIN MEDIA ROUNDUP

sectarianism among
Bahrains police force.

Bahrain launches
investigation into
leaked video showing
'sectarian' police
abuse
Bahrains Ministry of Interior
(MOI) has launched an
investigation into a video
posted online allegedly
showing the mistreatment
of a Shiite prisoner,
itannounced via its official
Twitter account on Tuesday.
Activists have said the
video provides evidence of

Almost 100 percent of

political prisoners are Shiite
in Bahrain and nearly 100
percent of the police are
Sunni, said a prominent
human rights activist, who
spoke to the Middle East
Eye by phone and asked to
remain anonymous for fear
of arrest.
This video is the result of
having institutions made up
of one sect, which means
more than half the country
is not represented.

Prison in Bahrain: A
Tale of Torture
He was shouting as he was
being beaten. Prisoners
could hear his screams.
The autopsy showed a
disfigured face, a fractured
skull, broken ribs, and an
exploded kidney. Meet
Hasan Alshaikh, 36 years
old, who died as a result of
torture in a prison in
Bahrain. He had served
more than half his
sentence.

Read More

Bahrain: An
Inconvenient
Uprising
Like many countries in the
Middle East and beyond,
Bahrain erupted with antiauthoritarian protests in
2011 when the Arab Spring
took the region and many of

Weakened
government finances
constrain Bahrain's
credit profile:
Moody's
Moody's Investors Service
said deteriorating
government finances,
political risks and a very
high reliance on oil
revenues against limited oil
reserves restrict Bahrain's
credit profile.

its repressive leaders by

surprise. While Arab Spring
uprisings found favor with
many in the West,
unfortunately for the people
of Bahrain, their own
revolution was largely
forgotten. But it never went
awayfor three years,
near-nightly protests have
been brutally quashed by
militarized security forces.
Read More
The country will also remain
vulnerable to domestic
political tensions and
contagion from regional
geopolitical instability, the
rating agency said on
Monday.
However, high income
levels, a reasonably welldiversifiedeconomy and a
strong external balance
sheet will continue to
support Bahrain's credit
profile, Moody's said.
Read More

Britain Calls For

Human Rights
Then Embraces a
Bahraini Torture
Suspect
In 1920, the British novelist
E.M. Forster described his
homeland as "an island of
hypocrites" and its rulers as
people who "built up an
Empire with a Bible in one
hand, a pistol in the other,
and financial concessions in
both pockets."
Almost a century later,
Forster's indictment aptly
describes the British
government's

On November 6, 2014 the

Bahrain Ministry of Interior
tweeted that a prisoner had
died in prison:
Hasan Alshaikh joins a list
of at least five other
prisoners who have died
due to torture in Bahrain
since 2011, and I share with
him something that is
unfortunately common in
my countrywe were both
victims of torture.
Read More

currentrelationship with the

Middle Eastern island state
ofBahrain specifically,
with theUK government's
contrasting treatment of the
Bahraini rights activist
Nabeel Rajab andalleged
torturer Prince Nasser bin
Hamad al-Khalifa, a
member of Bahrain's ruling
family.
After being freed from a
Bahraini jail earlier this
month,Rajab will
facesatrialin January on
charges that he offended
national institutions when
he compared Bahrain's
security forces to the
violent, sectarian forces of
the Islamic State.
Read More