Bahrain to silence opposition by revoking citizenship

Press TV has interviewed Hazem Salem, a political activist in Cairo, about Bahrain's recent decision to revoke the citizenship of the country’s most senior Shia cleric, Sheikh Isa Qassim.

A rough transcription of the interview appears below.

Press TV: If we take a look at what the regime has done, what do you think it hopes to achieve because at this point more people are coming out to protest and along with that it is getting condemnations from many different countries, namely Iran?

Salem: Well, it is a campaign of intimidation, it is a campaign of silencing the opposition and it is a campaign of trying to legalize the suppression by making it through either verdicts or some decrees and this is one of the ways that the Bahraini regime has started to adopt recently in order to silence the opposition, in order to show that the regime has got the might, and the authority and the people have to submit to this absolute power.

And this is actually taking the country nowhere except towards more sedition and more violence and more escalation of the situation. The situation has been like that for five years, the regime has not managed to silence the people. Now it is trying to do more and more and taking more harsher and more irrational measures like revoking the citizenship of one of the citizens. It is a very traditional, old-fashioned way of ruling, of deciding who is our citizen, who is not, while citizenship is a right that is born with every human being and every citizen of state has got rights to that state. It is not like the state decides whether to keep him as a citizen or not.

If this was the case, the Bahraini regime would have cancelled the citizenship of all the Shia community and kick them out in order to just have very obedient citizens. This is a very irrational move and it is not politically wise and it is going to trigger more escalation inside and more criticism outside Bahrain.  

Press TV: When you talk about criticism from outside Bahrain, are we looking at a situation inside Bahrain that may spill over to the outside given the fact that we are talking about a very prolific figure here - Ayatollah Qassim who has been on the scene for 50 years? Do you think that this has a wider impact?  

Salem: Inside Bahrain it will have a huge impact and it is trying to silence the father of the demand for freedom, the father of the demand for change and the demand who inspired Bahrain into active civil society and political peaceful activism and this is going to be really intriguing the Bahrainis inside as well as the outside of Bahrain because this is a very undue move, very undemocratic and very authoritarian.

Probably the people who are caring for democracy and who are caring for citizenship will voice their opposition to that kind of action but many of the Western countries, I believe, will try to be either ignoring what is happening or giving very lip-service not real criticism.

Anyway, this was one of the most irrational moves made by the regime and this is targeting one of the most senior important people or citizens of Bahrain and we have to emphasize this because any aggression against a citizen by that kind of measure should be opposed internationally and should take all the legal international measures against it.

There is also a problem with many people in the [Persian] Gulf in general who have no nationality or citizenship and this tells how regressive the regimes in the [Persian] Gulf are.

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