Bahrain cracks down on Formula One protesters

Security forces in Bahrain have cracked down hard on people protesting the country’s hosting of the Formula One race, which they say serves to distract world attention away from the government’s large-scale rights violations.

According to Press TV quoting the Sitra Media network, protest rallies took place in the Bilad al-Qadeem suburb of the capital, Manama, the western Nuwaidrat Village, as well as on the Sitra Island, likewise situated in the country’s west, on Thursday.

Security forces were deployed to all protest sites and attacked the demonstrators to break up the rallies, according to the network, which reports on political and human rights activism in Bahrain and the authorities’ treatment of the campaigners.

Pictures were also circulated across social media showing protesters burning the race’s tickets.

The Bahraini regime is notorious for its lack of tolerance of political opposition and exercising discrimination against the country’s Shia majority.

The government’s unremitting abuses prompted a popular uprising in 2011. Manama has been quelling all the protests ever since, martyring scores of protesters in the process. The regime has destroyed a square in the capital that had turned into an icon of the uprising. It has also dissolved opposition bodies.

Human rights organizations and rights activists say Bahrain’s move to host Forumla One worked to deflect attention from its ongoing draconian treatment of dissent. Earlier in the month, four rights bodies wrote to the Formula One management, urging it to call off the upcoming Grand Prix.

ME