Bahrain regime trying to maintain status quo: Ex-MP

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jawad Fairooz, a former Bahraini legislator from London, about the Al Khalifa regime’s decision to strip prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim of his Bahraini citizenship.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What does the Bahraini regime hope to achieve now by stripping Sheikh Isa Qassim of his citizenship?

Fairooz: It is so clear they reached dead-end and they found out they cannot force the opposition and they cannot change the idea and the demands of Sheikh Isa Qassim, where he supported the people demand for true democracy and true reform. And it is so obvious now where they are looking for the coming parliamentarian election of 2018. They thought that maybe the opposition and even Sheikh Isa Qassim will accept the current condition and go back where the condition was before 2011. But now it is so clear that either the opposition or Sheikh Isa Qassim still they are beside the people and insisting that a serious reform to be done without any type of, I can say, playing with the time. Additional to that ones, the starting with double sentence of Sheikh Ali Salman and detention of Nabil Rajab and preventing all human rights activists to ban them, their travel, it was so clear they had certain plan to start a new scene where going to be, it looks like, or going to be a harmful and very tight security more than it was within back five years.  

Press TV: Right now, Mr. Fairooz, before we go on to that, we all know that Sheikh Isa Qassim has been sort of a leader, so to speak, as far as this uprising in Bahrain goes in calling for reforms in a peaceful manner and keeping this movement as peaceful as possible. However, now the chances of Sheikh Isa Qassim being imprisoned looking extremely high, do you see this being derailed into another direction?

Fairooz: It looks like there was a joint wish and desire either by the ruling family or by Saudi Arabia, where they wanted more and more Bahrain to be controlled by Saudi and to be part of the Saudi policy. And I think that because they started, Saudis mainly, they started to lose the area or the countries they thought they can play a major either in Syria, Iraq or Yemen. So, now in Bahrain they want to be sure that they have total control of it either sectarian ways or political ways. And they don’t want to see any even minor changes toward the reform in Bahrain definitely it will affect the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and the same time definitely if the majority of the opposition who are Shia got little bit more power in Bahrain, it will affect the rest of the Eastern Province. And I think that’s more and more the Saudis and Emiratis they are backing Bahrain to let it the current condition, where the ruling family and monarchies are ruling to be extended for their time.

But in the same time, I cannot see that this horrified actions being taken without somehow with agreement or without somehow with understanding by allies of Bahrain mainly the United Kingdom, because the United Kingdom seriously they mentioned in so many occasions that they have the joint committee and still they think that Bahrain is going right direction toward the reform. And they have certain plans and workshops and engagement programs to make reforms within the judiciary and within the human rights issue, but day by day we can see it is backward and it is not forward. So, I think the Bahrain allies mainly the United Kingdom should be blamed and it is so surprised up to now that they didn’t even issue a statement condemning or even concerned or even to be worried about what happened today.

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