The Government's actions are also contradictory. This month it suspended several senior police officers, some of them members of the al-Khalifa ruling family, after they were accused of being implicated in torturing prisoners. One officer held an important position at Riffa police station, notorious for the use of torture, and another was a section chief of the CID. Demonstrations by Sunni in Riffa in favour of the suspended officers were followed by the immediate reinstatement of at least one of the men.
The hardliners in the royal family are led by the army commander, Khalifa bin Ahmed, and his brother, the Royal Court Minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed. They were once at odds with the Prime Minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman, who has held his job for 40 years since the British left in 1971, but they closed ranks when the Arab Awakening started in February in Bahrain, sparked by pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
The largely peaceful demonstrations centred on Pearl Square in the middle of the Bahraini capital Manama, but the Government reacted as if it was facing an armed insurrection. A Saudi-led military force crossed the causeway from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain in the middle of March and a brutal crackdown followed with mass arrests and use of torture.
Forensic experts brought in by an investigating commission verified that 63 detainees had been so severely mistreated that marks of torture were still visible three or four months later.
The hardliners in the royal family, supported by Saudi Arabia, have sought to marginalise Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad, seen as the most liberal royal. Before the March crackdown he sought to work out an agreement with al-Wifaq, the main opposition party.
Since then he, with King Hamad, has lost much of his authority.
The Government crackdown was accompanied by the state media launching an anti-Shia campaign, claiming, without any evidence, that Iran had fomented armed rebellion against the al-Khalifa dynasty. Sectarian hatred increased, leading to Sunni-run private companies and state organisations refusing to re-employ sacked Shia employees despite the King's order.
Mohammed Sadiq of Justice for Bahrain says that among those sacked who have not been re-employed are 24 Shia journalists, working on Al-Ayam newspaper, who were fired on March 16. About 402 workers at Aluminium Bahrain (almost all Shia) were sacked and only 50 have been re-employed, though they have had to sign new employment contracts whereby they lose all annual leave and sickness benefits.
The continuing repression has not returned stability to Bahrain and is not likely to do so.
- INDEPENDENT
