Police assault neglected presence of children
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Riot police stormed through a Manama square in the dark early Thursday firing rubber bullets and tear gas in a harsh crackdown on anti-regime protesters that left four dead, witnesses and opposition said.
Up to 95 protesters were wounded when police launched the operation in the iconic Pearl Square without warning at around 3.00 am (midnight GMT), sending protesters fleeing in panic, they said.
They attacked the square, where hundreds of people were spending the night in tents 
"They attacked the square, where hundreds of people were spending the night in tents," said one witness, 37-year-old Fadel Ahmad.
At the city's main Salmaniya hospital, medical staff were overwhelmed as ambulances and private cars were still ferrying in the injured more than three hours after the assault began.
Relatives of the victims gathered outside the hospital, angry and weeping.
During the operation, explosions and ambulance sirens could be heard a few hundred metres (yards) from the central square, which had been sealed off. Demonstrators fled pursued by security forces, as a helicopter flew overhead.
By dawn Thursday, police officers were clearing away the tents as acrid clouds of tear gas hung over the square.
Security forces were later in the morning deployed across Manama, with armed police blocking roads leading to the square and setting up checkpoints in other streets, causing heavy traffic congestion.
A surprise crackdown
We yelled, 'We are peaceful! Peaceful!' The women and children were attacked just like the rest of us The assault came with little warning. Mahmoud Mansouri, a protester, said police surrounded the camp and then quickly moved in.
"We yelled, 'We are peaceful! Peaceful!' The women and children were attacked just like the rest of us," he said. "They moved in as soon as the media left us. They knew what they're doing."
Dr. Sadek Akikri, 44, said he was tending to sick protesters at a makeshift medical tent in the square when the police stormed in. He said he was tied up and severely beaten, then thrown on a bus with others.
"They were beating me so hard I could no longer see. There was so much blood running from my head," he said. "I was yelling, 'I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor.' But they didn't stop."
He said the police beating him spoke Urdu, the main language of Pakistan. A pillar of the protest demands is to end the Sunni regime's practice of giving citizenship to other Sunnis from around the region to try to offset the demographic strength of Shiites. Many of the new Bahrainis are given security posts.
Akikri said he and others on the bus were left on a highway overpass, but the beatings didn't stop. Eventually, the doctor said he fainted but could hear another police official say in Arabic: "Stop beating him. He's dead. We should just leave him here."
Bahrain's parliament - minus opposition lawmakers who are staging a boycott - met in emergency session. One pro-government member, Jamila Salman, broke into tears.
As the crackdown began, demonstrators in the square described police swarming in through a cloud of eye-stinging tear gas.
"They attacked our tents, beating us with batons," said Jafar Jafar, 17. "The police were lined up at the bridge overhead. They were shooting tear gas from the bridge."
Lost children
Then all of a sudden the square was filled with tear gas clouds. Our women were screaming. ... What kind of ruler does this to his people? There were women and children with us! Many families were separated in the chaos. An Associated Press photographer saw police rounding up lost children and taking them into vehicles.
Hussein Abbas, 22, was awakened by a missed call on his cell phone from his wife, presumably trying to warn him about reports that police were preparing to move in.
"Then all of a sudden the square was filled with tear gas clouds. Our women were screaming. ... What kind of ruler does this to his people? There were women and children with us!"
ABC News said its correspondent, Miguel Marquez, was caught in the crowd and beaten by men with billy clubs, although he was not badly injured.
Hospital officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said four people were killed early Thursday. Wounded streamed by the dozens into Salmaniya medical center, the main state-run hospital in Manama, with serious gaping wounds, broken bones and respiratory problems from the tear gas.
Outside the medical complex, dozens of protesters chanted: "The regime must go."
Tanks and armored personnel carriers were seen on some streets - the first sign of military involvement in the crisis - and authorities send a text message to cell phones that said: "The Ministry of the Interior warns all citizens and residents not to leave the house due to potential conflict in all areas of Bahrain."
Hours before police moved in, the mood in the makeshift tent city was festive and confident.
People sipped tea, ate donated food and smoked apple- and grape-flavored tobacco from water pipes. The men and women mainly sat separately - the women a sea of black in their traditional dress. Some youths wore the red-and-white Bahraini flag as a cape.
Bahrain defies US call
The security forces evacuated Pearl Square ... after having exhausted all chance of dialogue Bahrain's authorities, defying U.S.-led appeals for restraint, said they had no choice.
"The security forces evacuated Pearl Square ... after having exhausted all chance of dialogue," interior ministry spokesman General Tarek al-Hassan said, in a statement from the official news agency BNA.
"Some left the place of their own accord, while others refused to submit to the law, which required an intervention to disperse them," he said.
Thousands of demonstrators inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, had been occupying the square since Tuesday, after police killed two young Shiite demonstrators during anti-government protests.
The leader of the main Shiite opposition condemned it as a "savage and unjustified attack against a peaceful assembly."
Sheikh Ali Salman, head of the Islamic National Accord Association (INAA), told AFP: "This attack was a mistaken decision which will have catastrophic repercussions on the stability of Bahrain."
The INAA said riot police had opened fire without warning using rubber bullets.
Relatives named two of the dead as Mahmoud Makki Ali, 22, and Ali Mansour Ahmad Khoder, 52, though they did not indicate the circumstances of their deaths.
One of Khoder's relatives said: "We refuse to receive the body until we get a written report on the main reasons behind his death."
An MP from INAA, Ali al-Aswad told AFP that a third protester shot in his chest with a hollow-point bullet died of his wounds, naming him as Hussein Zaid.
He said another protester, 60-year-old Issa Abdul Hassan died after being shot in the head by police, adding that at least 95 people were injured, some seriously.
Aswad also accused the security forces of denying ambulances access to the square to hospitalise injured protesters.
Death toll increases
The latest deaths bring to six the number of demonstrators killed since the protests began on Monday in response to messages posted on Facebook.
Protesters had renamed Pearl Square as Tahrir (Liberation) Square, after the area in Cairo that became the focal point of an uprising that finally toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak last Friday after 18 days of nationwide protests.
On Wednesday, thousands of Bahrainis chanted for a "real constitutional monarchy" after the burial of the second protester.
But the atmosphere had been relaxed as thousands poured into Pearl Square after the funeral. The interior ministry had said it would allow demonstrators to stay in the square, "taking in consideration the feelings" of the people.
Before the latest clashes, the White House said Wednesday it was watching the developments "very closely" and called on Bahrain's rulers to allow peaceful anti-government protests.
Bahrain serves as headquarters for a pillar of American military power, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, which commands a rotating flotilla of vessels charged with safeguarding oil shipping lanes in the Gulf and countering Iran.
Protesters' demands
While the protests began as a cry for the country's Sunni monarchy to loosen its grip, the uprising's demands have steadily grown bolder. Many protesters called for the government to provide more jobs and better housing, free all political detainees and abolish the system that offers Bahraini citizenship to Sunnis from around the Middle East.
Increasingly, protesters also chanted slogans to wipe away the entire ruling dynasty that has led Bahrain for more than 200 years and is firmly backed by the Sunni sheiks and monarchs across the Gulf.
Although Bahrain is sandwiched between OPEC heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it has limited oil resources and depends heavily on its role as a regional financial hub and playground for Saudis, who can drive over a causeway to enjoy Bahrain's Western-style bars, hotels and beaches.
Social networking websites had been abuzz Wednesday with calls to press ahead with the protests. They were matched by insults from presumed government backers who called the demonstrators traitors and agents of Iran.
The protest movement's next move is unclear, but the island nation has been rocked by street battles as recently as last summer. A wave of arrests of perceived Shiite dissidents touched off weeks of rioting and demonstrations.
Before the attack on the square, protesters had called for major rallies after Friday prayers. The reported deaths, however, could become a fresh rallying point. Thousands of mourners had turned out for the funeral processions of two other people killed in the protests earlier in the week.
After prayers Wednesday evening, a Shiite imam in the square had urged Bahrain's youth not to back down.
"This square is a trust in your hands and so will you whittle away this trust or keep fast?" the imam said. "So be careful and be concerned for your country and remember that the regime will try to rip this country from your hand but if we must leave it in coffins then so be it!"
Across the city, government supporters in a caravan of cars waved national flags and displayed portraits of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
"Come join us!" they yelled into markets and along busy streets. "Show your loyalty."
Thousands of mourners turned out Wednesday for the funeral procession of 31-year-old Fadhel al-Matrook, one of two people killed Monday in the protests. Later, in Pearl Square, his father Salman pleaded with protesters not to give up.
"He is not only my son. He is the son of Bahrain, the son of this nation," he yelled. "His blood shouldn't be wasted."
Monday's bloodshed brought embarrassing rebukes from allies such as Britain and the United States. A statement from Bahrain's Interior Ministry said suspects have been "placed in custody" in connection with the two deaths but gave no further details.
No comments:
Post a Comment