ceedee's posterous

Bahrain, along with Syria, has become a symbol of the failure of the Arab Spring to deliver real democracy and freedom across the Arab world. The media in Britain portray a rigid, oppressive almost feudal elite who are stubbornly holding out against the inevitable wave of modern freedoms and political justice.

But what is hardly ever mentioned in the press and TV reports is that this very system of oppression, the rock against which the dreams of democracy are being dashed, was largely created by the British. That, throughout most of the twentieth century, British advisers to the Bahraini royal family, backed up by British military might, were central figures in the creation of a ruthless system that imprisoned and sometimes tortured any Bahraini citizen who even dared to suggest the idea of democracy.

The same British advisers also worked with the rulers of Bahrain to exercise a cynical technique of divide and rule - setting Shia against Sunni in a very successful attempt to keep Bahrain locked in an old, decaying and corrupt system of tribal and religious rivalries. The deliberate aim was to stop democracy ever emerging.

The Bahrainis know this, practically everyone else in the Arab world knows this - the only people who seem to have forgotten are the British themselves.

So I thought I would tell the story of Britain's involvement in the government and the security of Bahrain over the past 90 years. Especially as the present King of Bahrain is coming to have lunch with the Queen on May 18th.

 

It began in the summer of 1925 when a young administrative officer in the British Colonial Service called Charles Belgrave read an advertisement in the middle of the "Personal Column" in the Times. It said:

 

Belgrave answered the mysterious advertisement and was then summoned to an interview in a West End hotel. His interviewer turned out to be one of the heads of the India Office - the government department which ran that part of the British Empire.

What Belgrave was offered was the job of being the British "adviser" to the new ruler of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The precise nature of the job was a bit murky (a murkiness that was going to run through this whole story). On the surface Belgrave would be completely independent of the British government - but what was also clear was that he was being sent there to deal with growing demands for reform and modernization that might threaten Britain's interests.

Ever since 1820 the British had dominated Bahrain. The Al Khalifa family ruled, but in reality it was protectorate whose affairs were "guided" by the British. In 1923 the previous ruler had gone berserk and started terrorising his people - so the British had removed him and installed his son. It was clear to Belgrave what his job was - to create a more centralised form of control in Bahrain and to manage the instability created by the previous ruler's reign of terror.

Belgrave took the job. And here is a picture of him sitting happily in "the Adviserate drawing room"

 

Belgrave soon became very powerful - and by the 1930s he was in effect running the government of Bahrain. The thing that gave him a supreme ability to manage any dissent was the fact that he ran the courts. Bahrain had no legal code - which allowed Belgrave as judge enormous power. Belgrave described it in his autobiography:

"I found that there was no written code in Bahrain so judgements had to depend on common sense alone. It was rough and ready justice, but it had the advantage of being speedy.

I sat three days a week with a minor Shaikh who was deaf, dull and averse to making decisions. When I asked his opinion he invariably replied, 'I think the same as you Excellency; I agree with whatever you say."

Many Bahrainis soon became convinced that Belgrave was using his power to make sure that the status quo was maintained and to prevent a modern, democratic political system developing. And in the 1950s this anger with Belgrave burst out in a dramatic and violent way - a popular revolt and demands for democracy uncannily like the events unfolding in Bahrain today.

It started in 1953 when a Shia religious parade was stoned and then a Shia neighbourhood attacked by groups of Sunni fanatics. Many believed that it was a deliberate provocation - to create sectarian divisions. People noticed that among the attackers were members of the ruling family including the brother of the Sheikh.

If it was a provocation - then it succeeded. For two years Bahrain was torn by Sunni vs Shia violence. In private Belgrave sympathised with the Shias, but as the public face of the Law in Bahrain he was ruthless. He handed down sentences that were far tougher on Shia rioters than on their Sunni counterparts. And this in turn led to even more rioting.

A group of leading middle-class Bahrainis set up the Higher Executive Committee. It was composed equally of Shias and Sunnis - and it called for Belgrave to go. He was helping foment religious hatred and imprisoning innocent people, they said, in order to keep Bahrain as a tribally controlled regime. They demanded instead democracy and a code of law.

Here is a picture of the Committee.

 

Things came to a head when in 1956 the British foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, flew to Bahrain for a visit. There was a large, violent demonstration with hundreds of Bahrainis trying to tell Lloyd to remove Belgrave - because he was standing in the way of making Bahrain a modern democracy.

The riots and the demonstration made the news in Britain - and Panorama came out to investigate. The report - by Woodrow Wyatt (later to become one of Rupert Murdoch's closest advisers) - is really good.

Wyatt interviews Belgrave who has a great quote about the demonstration - "it's anti-British, anti-Sheikh, and anti-me." But Wyatt also goes and talks to people on the street, almost all of who want Belgrave to go. One of them standing on the back of a truck sums it up neatly: "Belgrave is not just an adviser - he is the judge, and when he goes to the court he is also the police commandant. He is everything in Bahrain, he is not an adviser."

Faced with this instability the British government moved troops in at the end of 1956 and crushed the revolt. Three of the leading members of the committee were put on a Royal Navy ship and taken and imprisoned on the island of St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic. The same place that Napoleon had been dumped in 1815. One of them was Abdul Aziz Al Shamlan who is the committee member interviewed in the Panorama film.

This is a picture of their prison, plus a map - the purple blob shows where St Helena is.

 

But Belgrave had also outlived his usefulness - and the same year he too was dumped by the British (and by Sheikh Khalifa). He came back to Britain and wrote a self-serving autobiography which ends up suggesting that the Arabs aren't "ready" for democracy yet.

And things quietened down in Bahrain.

Until 1965 when another popular uprising began. It began in the oilfields but quickly spread to general strikes. Again the British sent in troops to crush the revolt - and many of the leaders were yet again deported.

But it didn't do much good for the British government - because both press and television in Britain began to ask what exactly was this weird feudal state that we were supporting? And why?

Across the Arab world people had been inspired by the new ideas of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, and they wanted freedom from the corrupt old Shaikhs and Kings who were propped up by the west. And in 1966 the BBC went out to Bahrain again and made a Panorama programme that tore into the hypocrisy of what Britain was doing in that country.

It didn't pull its punches - the reporter, called John Morgan, says to the camera at the end:

"If one of the tests of a society's health is a citizen's willingness to speak his mind freely in public then Bahrain belongs in the class of a Communist or a Fascist country - and we are deeply implicated in order to preserve our oil and foreign policy."

In the face of this the British government decided the only solution was to find another "adviser". The idea was that on the surface he would appear to be a freelance mercenary who was employed by the ruling Khalifa family. But in reality he would be chosen and placed there by the British Foreign Office to manage the internal security of Bahrain. His job was to prevent the instability that political change would inevitably bring - and the consequent threat to British interests.

The man the British chose was called Colonel Ian Henderson. He had been a colonial police officer in Kenya in the 1950s and had played a major role in suppressing the Mau Mau rebellion. The Kenyans were convinced that Henderson had been involved in ordering both torture and assassination during the rebellion - and the moment the country achieved independence in 1964 its new leaders threw Henderson out.

Here is Henderson being interviewed at Heathrow the day he flew back. I think you can get a very good sense of what he is like - especially in his slightly frightening matter-of-factness. Speculating on the reasons for his expulsion he says, with a faraway look in his eyes:

"What I did many years ago as a police officer during the emergency is today not seen as something very desirable."

Well - yes.

A little while ago a Scottish journalist called Neil Mackay uncovered secret Foreign Office documents that show that the senior British diplomat in Bahrain in 1966 - Antony Parsons - worked on the ruling Sheikh Khalifa to persuade him to appoint Henderson as head of what was called the Special Branch - and to give Henderson a free hand to reorganise it into an efficient, modern covert surveillance "anti terrorist" organisation.

To begin with Henderson presented himself a a new breed of security chief. He freed all the prisoners from the 1965 uprising and announced that the country would now be ruled by proper law, not arbitrary detention. He also persuaded the Khalifas to welcome back militants from protest movements like the Bahrain National Liberation Front and the Popular Revolutionary Movement.

It was all very nice, but many Bahrainis now believe that what Henderson was also doing was building up an intricate system of infiltrators and double agents inside the protest movement - in preparation for the day when Britain pulled out of Bahrain and gave it independence.

That came in 1971 and for a moment ordinary Bahrainis had a modern political system of democracy. In 1973 the ruling Amir - Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa - approved a constitution for the country, and the first parliamentary elections took place.

But then something very sinister happened. Within a year Colonel Ian Henderson proposed a new law he called the State Security Law. It said that any Bahraini could be held for three years without charge or trial on just the suspicion that they might be a threat to the state. It was known as 'the precautionary law'.

It caused an outrage - because it meant that anyone could be imprisoned just on the imaginative suspicions of Colonel Henderson and his State Security acolytes. Parliament rejected the bill in June 1975 and there was a standoff with the regime, and with Henderson.

The Amir solved it in the simplest way - he suspended those articles of the Constitution that guaranteed freedom to the people, and he suspended parliament.

And in August 1975 Henderson went to work. His men began to fill up Bahrain's jails with activists - and among them were members of the now deceased parliament. And for the next twenty five years Henderson ran a ruthless system of repression that kept the al Khalifa family in power and stopped any movement towards democracy.

Opposition activists and human rights groups have repeatedly alleged that this repression has involved widespread torture, the rolling imprisonment without trial of thousands of people, deaths and assassinations. Henderson denies this. In the face of the charges Ian Henderson has repeatedly said that he has never been involved in torture nor has he ever ordered his officers to torture those who have been arrested.

One of the key questions is whether this repression was still in Britain's interest? On the one hand you can argue that it protected the flow of oil, that it kept Bahrain as a bulwark first against communism and then from the 80s onwards against Shia Islamist revolution - plus that Bahrain also became the home to the American Fifth Fleet.

But you can also argue that by inserting Ian Henderson into the Bahraini system of power and security in 1966, the British created an infernal machine that just kept on running after they left in 1971. That machine had been told to prevent any political protests that might destablise the country - and that's what it proceeded to do. The Al Khalifas loved the machine because it kept them in power - and as a result hundreds and thousands of Bahrainis were left stuck with a vicious ghost from the failure of the British empire.

And true to form the British in the 1970s ignored the repression and the torture going on around them. Here are a selection of films the BBC made about Bahrain in the 1970s

First is an extract from a film made about the town of Awali - where all the British oil workers lived. It is an extraordinary place because in the middle of the desert the British have created a copy of a Surrey suburb where they live in blissful separateness from the rest of the country.

Except at the end - when a British couple being interviewed suddenly start describing how strange it is - they say it's like "living in a cotton wool world. I think it is really bad to live here in a world without responsibility. This place steals your life away"

And here are some extracts from one of the oddest arts programmes the BBC has ever shown. It follows a musical composer called David Fanshawe (and collector of Arabian folk music) as he creates his new work called "Arabian Fantasy" in various locations around Bahrain.

He does this by banging oil pipes and machinery in the oilfields, by assembling lots of oil tankers and signalling them with flags to blow their hooters, all interspersed with helicopter shots of him playing his synthesizer in a prog-rock kind of way in all kinds of locations around the island state.

It's made even odder by the appearance of Fanshawe's sidekick who had built his own very complex synthesizer that treats and distorts all the noises. He's called Adrian Wagner - and is a descendant of the famous composer.

Fanshawe is doing all this because he grew up in Bahrain as a boy when his uncle was the naval commander of the British fleet there in the 1950s - and there are bits of him wandering nostalgically round empty expat swimming pools. He's quite annoying - and he seems to like funk music as well.

Then in 1979 the Queen of England came to visit Bahrain - and I've stumbled on the unedited rushes of her visit. Here are some of them. I've listened through to all of her and Prince Philip's overheard conversations with the ruling Amir - and she doesn't seem to mention any of the repression, imprisonment without trial, or killings.

But she does have to suffer a rather strange dance which is apparently expressing how the rights have women have been progressing in Bahrain. At least that's the only thing she had to suffer - unlike many Bahrainis.

And Bahrain had other uses for Britain in the 1970s. In 1979 the BBC made a very creepy documentary film about how Bahrain had become a central hub for the new supersonic jet - Concorde. The truth was that at that time practically no other country wanted Concorde because of the very loud sonic booms it made - and the Al Khalifa family stepped in to save British Airways.

 

This is a section from the documentary where the British Airways manager Tim Phillips goes to see the Amir at the regular Majlis - where people come to petition and lobby their ruler. Phillips seems to be convinced that the Majlis is almost a better form of democracy than we have in Britain. It is followed by the very creepy scene when he gets to talk one-to-one with to the Amir, and the scene sums up in a nutshell Britain's relationship with this weird state.

Ian Henderson soon became the Dr Evil of Bahrain. He was hated because he was seen as the man whose security law had helped destroy the Constitution and democracy in the country.

In response a new protest movement began to grow which united the secular left and Islamists around the simple, dramatic demand that the constitution and parliament should be restored. It grew slowly at first - but in 1994 it emerged as The Constitutional Movement - and it set out to confront Henderson.

It was the biggest revolt yet seen in Bahrain and it had widespread popular support that crossed across the Shia - Sunni divide. Henderson and his security forces responded viciously. The opposition accused them of using the same tactics of divide and rule that had been seen in the 1950s, deliberately fomenting sectarian hatreds. Henderson's forces were also accused of imprisonment and torture on a scale not seen before.

And - just as in 1956 - at the very heart of the Constitutional Movement's demands was the removal of the British "adviser" who they said was the mastermind behind the terror that was engulfing the country. In the words of the opposition:

"Security and special branch chief General Henderson, along with a bunch of British mercenaries who are in control of the security apparatus bear full responsibility for the deterioration of relations between people and regime and for the festering political crisis - by their policy of sectarian discrimination, by waging large scale arrests and killing campaigns, and by fabricating plots designed to alienate the masses from the movement."

And finally the British noticed. Here is a really good report made for the BBC in 1996 by the brilliant reporter Sue Lloyd Roberts. She uses secret filming and blurred interviews to show what was really going on and evoke the fear that the rolling repression was creating for hundreds of thousands of Bahraini people.

And just like in the 1950s the publicity became too much. In 1999 a new member of the Al Khalifa family took over the leadership of Bahrain - and he decided to finish with Ian Henderson's services.

Henderson returned to Britain where various human rights groups and MPs persuaded the Home Secretary to get the police to investigate whether Henderson could be prosecuted for ordering torture. But the police found that the Bahrain government refused to give them any evidence. So they gave up.

The new Amir also abolished Henderson's hated State Security Law - and announced there would be elections to parliament. At first it all seemed to be a genuine return to the democratic dreams of 1973. But it wasn't. By 2010 it had become clear that the new parliament had practically no real power.

Then came the events in Tunisia at the beginning of 2011 - and it reactivated the opposition in Bahrain. They occupied Pearl Roundabout in Manama - but on the night of the 17th of February the protestors met the full force of the Bahraini security forces.

Ian Henderson might have gone away - but the ferocious system that he helped build hasn't and it haunts the Gulf still today.

By Frank Gardner BBC Security Correspondent, Bahrain

The BBC's Frank Gardner had five minutes to meet with Bahraini hunger striker Abdulhadi al-Khawaja

Abdulhadi al-Khawaja looked as surprised as we filed into his air-conditioned hospital room on Tuesday.

Dressed in olive green overalls and white hospital slippers, his black hair neatly trimmed, his eyes bright and alert, he was sitting up on the edge of his bed after performing his noon prayers.

Bahrain's most renowned jailed dissident was not told until minutes earlier that he was about to receive his first ever visitors from the international media.

We were only told that morning that our request had been granted, on strict conditions. Five minutes only, no TV cameras, no recording equipment, just a few still photographs to record the event.

Policemen and hospital staff milled around in the corridor outside his upstairs room in the well guarded and ultra modern military hospital run by the BDF, the Bahrain Defence Forces. Several officials filed in behind us.

With so little time allowed, we needed to concentrate on the essentials. After more than 80 days reportedly on hunger strike, was he at death's door and was he going to continue his fast?

International attention

Mr Khawaja began a much-publicised hunger strike on 8 February in protest at the life sentence passed down on him and others by a military court last June during Bahrain's three-month "state of national security".

He and his co-defendants were charged with attempting to depose the monarchy by force and liaising with terrorists last year.

Anti-government demonstrators in Bahrain have been holding protests in support of Mr Khawaja

Mr Khawaja, a Shia, has never made any secret of his opposition to the 200-year old rule of Bahrain's Al-Khalifa family, who are Sunnis.

But international human rights groups and many diplomats have questioned the evidence on which he was convicted.

The day before our visit we attended a hearing at Bahrain's highest court, the Court of Cassation, where a panel of judges ruled that his and the cases of 19 other jailed dissidents should now be reviewed by a civil court.

The international community is pressing for these cases to be resolved as soon as possible while Denmark, where Mr Khawaja holds dual nationality, is pressing for him to be transferred there for medical treatment.

A nation divided

In Bahrain, the case of Mr Khawaja is like a microcosm of the divisions that split this tiny but strategically important Gulf kingdom.

To his supporters, who are many in the seething Shia villages where protest marches morph all too often into violent clashes with police, Mr Khawaja is a hero, a human rights defender who has worked tirelessly all his life for democracy and human rights across the region.

But many in the mainstream Shia political opposition do not share his radical views. They want to reform the way Bahrain is ruled but not get rid of the monarchy altogether, a move they know risks leading the country into civil war.

Mr Khawaja comes from the Shirazi sect of Shia Islam and is viewed with a degree of suspicion by mainstream opposition figures, but they can see his enormous popularity on the streets of Shia neighbourhoods and few would criticise him publicly.

Most Sunni Bahrainis, who are estimated to make up somewhere between 35-45% of nationals, do not like Mr Khawaja or what he stands for.

They see him as a threat to their whole way of life, and to Bahrain's prosperity, believing that he and his associates would usher in an Iranian-style Islamic republic. His wife Khadija has categorically denied any links with Iran.

But five minutes in a hospital room with a man on hunger strike was not the time or place to get into the finer points of an opposition political agenda.

'Managed hunger strike'

The first thing my producer and I did was to check that he was happy to meet us - which he said he was - that this was not some forced interview under duress.

Mr Khawaja, who was beaten and tortured in custody so badly last year he needed titanium plates inserted into the side of his head, said his medical treatment in the military hospital had been good, "apart from the force feeding", something the hospital and the government firmly denies.

Mr Khawaja is being held at the Bahrain Defence Forces' military hospital

After reading reports on social media that "he could die at any minute", I was expecting to see a skeletal figure chained to the bed with intravenous drips.

But Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, although closely guarded, was not restrained in his room when we saw him, and we did not see any drips.

He told us he was taking fluids and hospital staff, who check on him every two hours, said he regularly consumes cans of nutritional supplements.

It was also clear that this is a managed hunger strike, pulling Mr Khawaja back from danger when his medical indicators reached worrying levels.

He is walking and exercising but is still visibly thin, having lost around 25% of his body weight.

We had the strong impression that this is a man who wants to make a stand but does not want to actually die (suicide is haram, forbidden, in Islam).

He told us he will continue his hunger strike until free, and at the time of the interview there was no date yet announced for his case to be judged by the civil court.

The US Sunni strategy in the Gulf enables Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa dynasty’s continued repression of its citizens; pits the US against pro-democracy forces in the region; and aligns Washington with Riyadh’s counter-revolution sectarian policies. The strategy is shortsighted, undermines US standing in the region and is destined to fail.

The strategy is based on the false assumption that the Sunni world is monolithic and that Shia Arab communities all turn to Iran for theological guidance and political support. In reality, Sunni Muslims have diverse cultural, political and social goals and are not preoccupied, as some Gulf rulers are, with anti-Shia or anti-Iran rhetoric and policies. Meanwhile, Bahraini and Saudi Shia do not consider Iran their point of reference.

Invented in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the Sunni strategy was presented to the west as a defence plan against Iran. Unfortunately, Washington bought this bogus claim lock, stock and barrel for misconceived regional security considerations.

A few years back, some Sunni Arab leaders, including those of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, warned of a rising “Shia crescent” across the Arab world, including the Gulf. My analysts and I, however, briefed senior US policy makers that Sunni regimes used the Shia scare to muzzle their domestic opposition and paper over genuine grievances. In a report on the “Shaykhly” rulers of the Gulf, we judged those regimes must address their peoples’ grievances if they hoped to survive in the long run. The “Shia crescent” claim was a tactic to hide discrimination and repression against Shia communities. Bahrain is the most glaring example.

Since the 1970s, the Bahraini government has accused the Shia majority of being a front for Iran and urged America to expand its naval presence in the Gulf as a protective shield against the perceived Iranian threat. Washington accepted the Bahraini position despite the fact that the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain in that period was primarily Sunni.

The pro-reform demands, then and now, called for a constitution, free elections, an independent judiciary and a curtailment on the powers of the executive. The prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman, and his traditionalist allies in the ruling family objected to reforms and viewed all opposition as a threat to the dynasty. The ruler then – father of the present king – prevailed with his reform-minded allies within the family over the conservative faction.

To end the current violence and the regime’s human rights violations, three steps must be taken. First, western powers must strengthen the pro-reform faction in the ruling family. Second, Washington should urge the king to remove the prime minister, his uncle, from office; many Bahrainis think he symbolises corruption, repression and unyielding opposition to political reform. He has worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Nayef to undermine the pro-democracy movement in the Arab world, especially in Bahrain.

Third, America should send a clear message to Bahrain’s regime to halt violence against the Shia and act on all the recommendations of the Independent Commission of Inquiry. Washington should also begin to pull its Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain.

The huge US naval presence in Bahrain has not improved western security in the Gulf; has not altered Iran’s behaviour; and, more important, has not silenced the anti-regime opposition in the Gulf and in other Arab countries. Nor has it given the al-Khalifa and other Sunni regimes more legitimacy. Instead, its presence has arguably increased Iran’s belligerence and given Sunni regimes, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the false impression that Washington has given them a licence to kill their own people.

Moving the US military presence from Bahrain to “over the horizon” would be a clear signal that Arab dictatorship will no longer be tolerated, whether in Bahrain, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere.

The Formula One cars did eventually race in Bahrain, but calls for reform are rapidly becoming chants for regime change. Regime obfuscation will not be able to silence demands for justice and the right to live freely forever.

The writer is former director of the CIA Political Islam strategic analysis programme and author of ‘Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society’

When the Foreign Office urges British motor racing fans to stay away from Bahrain, this ain't no sporting event, folks, it's a political one. The Bahraini authorities prove it by welcoming sports reporters but refusing visas to other correspondents who want to tell the world what's going on in this minority-run, Saudi-dominated kingdom.

But what do our lads tell us from the circuit, 25 miles from the Bahraini capital, Manama? Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton are only in it for sport. Bahraini repression of its democratic majority? Nothing to do with us, governor. And Sebastian Vettel? "I think it's a lot of hype." Hype? HYPE? The Arab Awakening came to Bahrain a year ago, a majority Shia people demanding a democratically elected government – with a minority Sunni monarch still at its head, for heaven's sake, as generous an Arab Spring as you could find – and it's met with police gunfire, torture and death. And Master Vettel – is there anything left of the old cliché "moral compass"? – claims "it's a lot of hype". What a disgraceful man.

Supposing it was the Assad regime shelling out $40m to host the Formula One weekend (as well as shelling Homs). Would Bernie Ecclestone have been dining out in Damascus, happy to give the regime a soft sporting cover for its oppression? At least he seems to have some idea what is going on there. Sure, I know, the Bahrainis are not slaughtering their people like the Assad government. And there's no armed rebellion in Bahrain, as there is in Syria (although all year the Bahrainis have been doing their best to persuade us that there is). Or Iran. Now here's a Muslim nation that pretty much crushed all opposition in 2009. It's not doing any more killing. So would Bernie slip over to Tehran to do a bit of Formula One if he got the invitation?

Or – a much easier one, this – what if Bahrain was oppressing a Jewish rather than a Muslim Shia community demanding democracy? Messrs Button and Hamilton and Ecclestone – not to mention the clueless Vettel – would be shouting their refusal to participate from the rooftops. And rightly so. So why do they want to go ahead now? Why is it "a lot of hype" when Vettel knows – unless he's a complete git – that the Bahraini government's own report on last year's suppression describes deaths in custody, police torture and shooting deaths on the streets? Note that I haven't mentioned apartheid-era South Africa, nor the Berlin Olympics, which gave cover to Hitler. Bahrain is not South Africa, nor is it Nazi Germany (and those who use such parallels are gits themselves).

The days have gone when sportsmen and sportswomen can dissociate themselves from the moral values in which we claim to believe in the 21st century. If they want to behave like the sporting clods of 50 years ago, they should be forced to drive round the Bahrain circuit in Alfa Romeo 6Cs, Triumph Roadsters and Crosley Hotshots. Cars of the past for men of the past.

Formula One's grand prix in Bahrain has backfired before it has even begun. If the Bahraini authorities wanted to use the race as a symbol of business as usual after their crackdown on anti-government protesters last year, they are in for a disappointment. The race has become a magnet for protest, a magnifying glass of dissent bubbling away below the surface. "Don't race over our blood," the slogan goes in Manama, but that is what Formula One teams propose to do today.

John Yates, the former assistant commissioner of the Met employed by the Bahrain government to advise on police reform, should hang his head in shame for saying that protesters were not being abused by the police, because if they were they would be on YouTube. If Mr Yates had spoken to the Human Rights Watch team gathering evidence of the latest cases of abuse, he would have learned that the beatings have not stopped. They have merely changed venue from police stations, where CCTV has been installed in interrogation rooms, to the parking lot on the way. The beatings in police jeeps can last from two minutes to two hours, and the latest case recorded by HRW took place two days ago. Had he inquired, Mr Yates might have got a similar answer from Amnesty too, who wrote in a report this week that human rights violations continued unabated.

A regime that always was more interested in appearance rather than substance had other tricks up its sleeve. They set up an independent commission of inquiry (BICI), headed by the Egyptian-American jurist Cherif Bassiouni. It concluded that dozens of detainees had been tortured by security officials, and that police had repeatedly used unnecessary and excessive force, resulting in unlawful killings. The BICI made important recommendations and there have been institutional improvements like the establishment of a special investigations unit in the public prosecution office. But if this is reform, it tinkers around the edges. The prosecutor is investigating cases against 50 officers, and pursuing 10. Of those, six are Pakistani and Yemeni – in other words non- Bahraini – and all are in the lower ranks.

The game changer would be the release of prisoners, including 21 activists. That is not going to happen anytime soon. Britain and America make clucking noises but are just as cynical as the Bahraini royal family itself. Strategic alliances trump human rights. What is the difference between Bahrain and Syria? In two words, Saudi Arabia, which sees the trouble on its doorstep as its own Cuba. Nor is al-Jazeera, under new direction, interested in Bahrain. They are not being broadcast all over the Arab world, but Bahrain's deep problems are still there. And they will not be drowned out by the roar of engines today.

Whoever participates in this race is tainted by association with a malign regime

The kingdom of Bahrain is a repressive regime that has jailed and killed citizens who campaign for the reform of its monarchy. In Shia villages in the minority Sunni-led state, which was propped up by last year's intervention by Saudi troops, protests continue daily.

Only last week, Shia villages were attacked by supporters of the regime with knives and sticks. And while it is true that the country's ruling family commissioned a critical report into the violence of last year, it is also a fact that despite promising reform the regime has reneged on most of its promises while the perpetrators of abuses in its security services have gone largely unpunished.

You might think, in these circumstances, that a leading international sport and those who represent it might feel a little queasy about being asked to stage an event in Bahrain that is already being used by the regime to whitewash what happened last spring and the abuses that are still occurring.

But the "sport" we are talking about is Formula One, whose administrating body, the FIA, announced last week that it is "safe" for the Bahrain Grand Prix to go ahead next Sunday, even though last year's was cancelled in the midst of the bloody government crackdown.

The reality is that Formula One is not really much like other sports or, indeed, much like a sport at all.

Instead, the business, owned by venture capital firm CVC and run by Bernie Ecclestone on its behalf, more routinely demonstrates the worst aspects of global corporate culture than the best of the Corinthian ideals.

It consists of a too-cosy arrangement of rich teams, super-wealthy "athletes" – if they can be called such – sponsors and grand prix-staging countries whose interest is more about the bottom line and prestige than competition.

Unwilling to upset Bahrain's royal family – which owns 40% of the McLaren team – the cynical manoeuvres to justify holding the Bahrain Grand Prix have become ever more shoddy.

That has included Bahrain's employment, as a consultant, of former Metropolitan Police chief John Yates who dutifully wrote to the FIA's administrator, Jean Todt, to say he felt "safer" living in Bahrain than London and blamed protests on a "criminal" minority.

The reality, however, as Amnesty made clear a few days ago, is that "the human rights crisis in Bahrain is not over". It added: "Despite the authorities' claims to the contrary, state violence against those who oppose the Al Khalifa family rule continues, and in practice, not much has changed in the country since the brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters in February and March 2011."

Perhaps it is too much to expect Ecclestone, who has enriched himself hugely out of Formula One, to show a moral backbone. But the drivers, sponsors and team owners who participate should consider that they will be giving cover to a violently human rights-abusing regime by their participation and will be seen by many Bahrainis and others as accomplices in those continuing abuses. We can act, too, by not watching. Because sport – despite the protestations of Formula One's paid lobbyists – is not divorced from the moral world and this event, and Bahrain's continuing behaviour, demands our disapproval.

Your Majesty, King Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa,

We, the undersigned, call on the government of Bahrain to immediately and unconditionally release leading human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, whose life is now in grave danger as he enters the 61st day of his hunger strike, begun in protest at his detention and treatment.

We call for his urgent release on humanitarian grounds, and in conformity to the findings and recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI).

If Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is not released and dies in prison, the Bahrain government will signal a total failure of political will in addressing the human rights violations that occurred in 2011. This would further alienate the already fragile trust of opposition groups and instigate a dangerous collapse of civil society. Mr al-Khawaja is deeply revered and respected by much of the population of Bahrain, as well as the wider region and world. His death could dangerously inflame national tensions which are already escalating.

Mr al-Khawaja was arrested on 8 April 2011 and subjected to cruel and abusive treatment by government employees. A forensic team working for the BICI team investigated his case.

The BICI team found that his jaw was broken "immediately after the arrest" which required "major surgery" to heal. In hospital he was "blindfolded the whole time and handcuffed to the bed with tight cuffs". He was discharged from hospital, against the recommendations of his doctor, and placed in "solitary confinement in a small cell" where "there was no fresh air". He experienced "regular beatings at night", sexual assault and other torture.

Mr Al-Khawaja was tried before a military tribunal and given a life sentence for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the Bahrain government. Both his trial and subsequent appeal, which was also heard before a military tribunal, have been heavily criticised by major human rights and legal organisations. The BICI further found that after he was sentenced, he was "beaten by guards". The findings of the BICI report were also very critical of the quality of the justice Mr al-Khawaja and other political leaders received.

Recommendation 1,720 of the BICI report calls for all such military trials to be reviewed before a civilian court. Mr Al-Khawaja's life sentence was due to be reviewed before a civilian court on 2 April 2012. However, on that day a judge postponed the review until 23 April. Mr Al-Khawaja has now been on hunger strike for 61 days. The consequent deterioration of his health means that he will likely be dead or comatose before that date.

Mr al-Khawaja began his hunger strike on 8 February 2012. He has stated that he will continue this strike until "freedom or death". There is no question of his commitment to this stance.

If your government allows Mr al-Khawaja to die in prison, it will send a stark message that it means to ignore the most important recommendations of the BICI report. The message will spread not just across Bahrain, but internationally, to citizens and governments who have relied upon your assurances that you are committed to reform.

You have the power to release Mr al-Khawaja. It will be a stain on Bahrain if his death comes before his freedom.

In the interests of justice and reconciliation in your country, we urgently and respectfully ask you to release Mr al-Khawaja immediately and unconditionally,

Signed:

The Right Honourable Lord Avebury

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Richard Burden MP

Front Line Defenders

PEN International

Doctors in Chains

Professor Sajjad Rizvi (University of Exeter)

Professor Scott Lucas (University of Birmingham)

Professor F Gregory Gause III (University of Vermont)

Professor Craig Toby Jones (Rutgers University)

Professor Khaleel Mohammed (San Diego State University)

Dr Christopher Davidson (Durham University)

Dr Mike Diboll (formerly of University of Bahrain)

As the government in Manama prepares to welcome back Formula One, activists say human rights abuses continue

Bahrain's best known human rights activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is on the 57th day of a hunger strike, could die in jail at any moment say those who have seen him recently.

"His heart could stop at any time or he could slip into a coma," said his daughter Maryam. Mr al-Khawaja, 51, who was sentenced to life in jail last year for an alleged plot to overthrow the Bahraini monarchy, says he will continue his hunger strike until he is freed or he dies.

His death is likely to ignite violence in Bahrain where members of the majority Shia community have protested against his imprisonment. It would also discredit the attempt by the Bahraini government to persuade the international community it is seriously pursuing legal and constitutional reforms.

The detention of Mr al-Khawaja, has lead to calls for the cancellation of the Bahrain Formula One race later this month. The government has been publicising the race as a sign that Bahrainis are united and the situation on the island Kingdom has returned to normal. "They are using it as a celebration that we are one nation while people are being killed weekly," says Zaynab, another daughter of Mr al-Khawaja.

Mary Lawlor of the human rights group Front Line Defenders, who led a team on a three-day visit to Bahrain this week, said: "I don't see how the Formula One can go ahead if Abdulhadi al-Khawaja dies in jail." She said she had asked him to end his fast, but he refused. "He has lost 25 per cent of his body-weight and he was already a thin man," she said.

Ms Lawlor says the Bahraini government may not realise the seriousness of his condition. Other sources say he cannot sit up in bed in the al-Qalaa prison prison where he has been transferred.

The Bahrain government says Mr al-Khawaja is being well cared for. "All policies and procedures of the prison facilities in Bahrain meet international human rights standards and all detainees have consistent and reliable access to professional medical care," said Major General Tariq al-Hassan, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, in a statement. Mr al-Khawaja's condition "is under constant surveillance" and he receives daily medical attention said Maj-Gen al-Hassan.

Mr al-Khawaja, the founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was arrested last April by security men who dragged him down the stairs of his apartment building, breaking his jaw in four places. He underwent a four hour operation and says he was later tortured, beaten and threatened with rape. He was among 2,929 Bahrainis arrested after the government started a campaign of repression on 15 March, in which many of those imprisoned were tortured, often being forced to sign confessions saying they were planning to overthrow King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and had received aid from Iran.

The monarchy has launched a campaign to restore its reputation, saying it is dedicated to reform and to preventing a recurrence of abuses. It commissioned a report by the jurist Cherif Bassiouni, published in November, that confirmed the use of torture and said there was no evidence of Iranian involvement in Bahrain.

The US and Britain have been embarrassed by the repression which opened them up to charges of hypocrisy, given their tolerance of abuses in Bahrain and outrage at similar actions in Libya and Syria. Mr al-Khawaja has joint Danish-Bahraini citizenship and the Danish government has tried to have him sent to Denmark for treatment but without result.

Mr al-Khawaja's family were hopeful when his case was brought before a Court of Cassation in Bahrain this week that he and other defendants would be granted bail. But the judge deferred the hearing until 23 April, the day after the Formula One on 20-22 April. Despite the repression there have been continual demonstrations in Shia villages across Bahrain over the last year.

There is growing international consensus that Bahrain is not carrying out reforms recommended by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry under Mr Bassiouni. Human Rights Watch says hundreds of people who were unjustly imprisoned during the repression are still in jail and no senior officers have been held to account for overseeing torture on a mass scale.

A prominent Bahraini human rights activist has told Amnesty International how he was injured when security forces attacked peaceful protesters in Manama on Friday evening.

Nabeel Rajab, the director of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was hospitalized after a group of police punched him and used truncheons to beat him in the face, back and elsewhere.

The attack happened near Rajab's car after riot police had fired tear gas at protesters marching along Manama’s Bab al-Bahrain Street to call for the release of political prisoners.

“I fell on the ground but they continued to beat me – they even stamped on me and kicked me,” Nabeel Rajab told Amnesty International after being treated for his injuries at Salmaniya hospital late on Friday night.

“This went on for a few minutes and then a senior officer recognized me and intervened. He asked the others to stop and he helped me. I was taken to Salmaniya hospital, where I was treated for about three hours. I have a lot of bruises on my back and on my face.”

Nabeel Rajab told Amnesty International he intends to file an official complaint about the assault.

On Saturday, the state-run Bahrain News Agency issued a statement in response to the incident, linking to a video of the demonstration which they claim shows that Nabeel Rajab wasn’t seriously injured.

In the video, Rajab can be seen seated on the ground before being helped to an ambulance by police, but the footage does not show how he sustained his injuries.

The human rights defender had been participating in a large, peaceful march along Manama’s Bab al-Bahrain Street, calling for the release of political prisoners being held in relation to pro-reform protests that began in February 2011.

Security forces responded to the march and, when protesters ignored orders to disperse, they broke up the crowd by firing tear gas.

Amnesty International said the security forces in Bahrain unnecessarily used force when they fired tear gas to disperse the protesters, despite government pledges to implement reforms recommended in November, when a team of international jurists published a key report on the crackdown on protests.

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry – chaired by Egyptian jurist Cherif Bassiouni – prescribed wide-ranging change that included decriminalizing public gatherings. 

“The Bahraini security forces’ ongoing violent attacks on peaceful protesters fly in the face of official pledges to make amends and to implement the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry’s recommendations,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director at Amnesty International.

“Attacks on human rights defenders and peaceful protesters must not be tolerated, and those responsible for Friday’s violence must be held accountable for their actions.”

Ali al-Ghanami joins the protesters, 17 February 2011

A military court in Bahrain has sentenced a policeman to more than 12 years in jail for joining protests against the royal family last year.

Ali al-Ghanami, a 25-year-old junior police officer, had left his guard post and joined protesters on 17 February 2011 after security forces had cleared a major traffic circle in the capital Manama.

On that day police action against peaceful demonstrators at Pearl Roundabout left two protesters dead and more than a hundred injured.

Video footage from the day shows people being fired on with birdshot at point blank range. The footage was supplied by activists.

His brother told the BBC Mr Ghanami witnessed dead and wounded being taken to nearby Salmaniya hospital.

"He was very emotional. He stood in front of people in his uniform and said I cannot work for a killer institution."

He told the crowd he was leaving the force and joining the anti-government protests that were to convulse the tiny Gulf island kingdom for months.

For the next month, Mr Ghanami spoke openly at rallies against the government of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

'Official anger'

Bahrain is ruled by the Al Khalifas, a Sunni Muslim royal family. The majority of the indigenous population are Shia Muslims. The Shia, who made up most of the protesters, have complained for years about discrimination in jobs, housing and education.

When GCC forces led by troops from Saudi Arabia entered the kingdom in March, Mr Ghanami, a Shia, went into hiding.

After six weeks on the run, he was arrested. He has been detained in solitary confinement since September.

On Monday he was sentenced to seven and a half years for taking part in 11 rallies and for absence without leave, three years for incitement to hatred against the government and two years for disturbing the peace.

A human rights activist who did not want to be named told the BBC the severity of the sentence reflected official anger.

" He was the first," the activist said "and he encouraged other officers to quit and join the movement"

The activist claimed that nearly 200 had followed Ali's lead and joined the protests. All of them were subsequently arrested but only one other received a sentence as long as Mr Ghanami.