Khateeja al-Mousawi, wife of Bahrain human
rights activist Abdul
Hadi Khawaja during a demonstration outside a court
in Bahrain's
capital of Manama, Nov. 21, 2004. Amid today's
uprising against
the nation's absolute monarchy, his case, which
went to trail May
11, has become a rallying cry for the
pro-democracy movement.
He
and 14 others are charged with seeking to topple the regime.
Tehran Times, Iran
West Uses bin
Laden's Death to Distract from Bahrain Atrocities
Is the United States masking
atrocities being committed in its name in Bahrain by excessively celebrating
the death of the world's one-time leading terrorist, Osama bin Laden? According
to Mojtaba Sadeghian,
writing for Iran's strictly controlled Tehran Times, the crimes of the Bahrain
royal family and its Saudi ally highlight the continuing hypocrisy of U.S.
claims to be the beacon of peace and justice.
Mainstream media outlets in
the United States are celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, while trying to
convince the world that America has now established the justice everyone was
waited so long for. At the same time, with Washington's tacit approval, the
repression of the Bahraini people is continuing.
The death of the al-Qaeda
leader provided an opportunity for U.S. President Barack Obama to appear on
television and speak of America's version of justice, which allegedly has now been
established after years and years of counterinsurgency operations in the
mountains and villages of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet to establish this
so-called justice and restore order, unimaginable suffering had to be imposed
on the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas
[FATA]. But everyone knows there's no justice or order in Afghanistan or FATA.
So now the discussion about
justice is over. The topic has changed. Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, nothing
else matters to U.S. officials.
It's been more than three
months since the violence in Bahrain began. The security forces of the Al
Khalifa royal family and troops from Saudi Arabia are killing innocent people,
and nary a peep is heard from the global community. America remains silent
because its interests are being served by the Saudis, and the general public in
the Western world is being kept distracted by the death of Bin Laden. So there's
no time to speak of Bahrain and whether or not justice matters.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
The Al Khalifa family has
ruled Bahrain as absolute monarchs for decades and is backed by Saudi Arabia, a
key regional ally of the United States. And it was recently reported that the
Pentagon's biggest military contract in its history was signed with Saudi
Arabia. The value of the contract is estimated to be over $60 billion. Stockholders
of the U.S. military-industrial complex are making money and are indifferent to
the fact that Bahrain's security forces and Saudi troops are committing
atrocities on a small island in the Persian Gulf, which is also base for the
U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Thus, no response is the best
response. U.S. officials want to maintain ties with their strategic ally, which
is also the world’s largest oil producer, and they don't care what happens to
the Bahraini people. Bahrain is another clear example of the double-standards
that the U.S. follows in dealing with global issues and the very issue of
justice itself.
Apparently, for American officials,
celebrating the death of a terrorist like bin Laden is much more important than
the lives and futures of hundreds of thousands of Bahrainis. While attempting
to give the world the impression that it's the standard-bearer of peace and
justice, America's hypocrisy has been exposed in Bahrain and countless other
places, where U.S. actions actually promote injustice and war.
