Articles
Category: Video
Published Date
Title: Bahrain: Towards Reform or Repression?
Speaker: Dr. Saeed al-Shehabi, Karen Dubrowska and Abed Choudhury
Date: 15th October 2010 at 18:45
Venue: Abrar House, 45 Crawford Place, W1H 4LP
Event details:
The tiny Gulf state of Bahrain is a major financial centre, gas exporter and home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet. It attracts many Saudi visitors every week, perhaps partly because of its less strict laws. Amidst regular protests and ahead of elections on 23 October, the state has imprisoned hundreds of people, accusing some of them of being terrorists. Critics say such people are mainly activists and political dissidents.
The detainees include a British-Bahraini dual national, Jaafar al-Hisabi, whose lawyer alleges that he has been tortured, and not for the first time. Human Rights Watch and the Bar Council of England & Wales' Human Rights Committee have expressed serious concern about widespread allegations of torture.
Many religious and political tensions surround the island: for example, the ruling Al-Khalifa royal family is Sunni and allied to the US whilst the population is mainly Shia with suspected sympathy for neighbouring Iran. Join us for a discussion on the future of Bahrain and any knock-on effects on other Gulf states.
The speakers:
Dr. Saeed al-Shehabi of the Bahrain Freedom Movement. A London-based scientist and journalist, accused by the Bahraini government of being a mastermind of a "terrorist network" inside Bahrain.
Karen Dabrowska is an experienced and widely-travelled editor & journalist who has worked at New Horizon, Iraq Update, Kuwait Review, The Yemen Times & Islamic Tourism magazine (www.islamictourism.com). She has undertaken editorial assignments for ZDF German television and in 2004 she set up a good news website about Iraq: www.anotherIraq.com. Karen is the author of Bahrain Briefing: The Struggle for Democracy, December 1994 – December 1996. Her other works include Iraq: The Bradt Travel Guide (2002), Iraq: Then And Now – a guide to the country and its people (2008), two reports on the Iraqi regime’s violations of human rights and Addis Ababa: A pocket guide to Ethiopia’s capital city (1986).
Abed Choudhury currently works as an advocate. IHRC sent abed to bahrain in october 2009 and again in july 2010 to observe various cases involving demonstrators. IHRC has published the reports of his observations which are available on their website
www.ihrc.org