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Bahraini regime has closed all doors to negotiation: Scholar

Saturday, 28 January 2017 11:42 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 28 January 2017 12:37 PM ]

This file photo taken on February 13, 2015 shows Bahraini protesters taking cover from tear gas during clashes with police in Bilad al-Qadeem village on the outskirts of the capital Manama. (Photo by AFP)

Religious leaders in Bahrain have condemned the Al Khalifah regime’s heavy-handed crackdown on dissent. In a statement, the Bahraini clerics have also criticized the Manama regime and the UK intelligence agency for the violence in the Arab nation.

Shabbir Hassanally, a London-based activist and Muslim scholar, says that the Manama regime does not want a peaceful solution to the political conflict in Bahrain because the Al Khalifah dynasty only knows the language of force.

As Al Khalifah continues to kill, arrest, revoke people’s citizenships, all it’s doing is closing that door to negotiation and ultimately killing itself, he noted, adding, “The only language they know is the language of force.

“The Al Khalifah regime in Bahrain and the Al Saud regime in Saudi [Arabia] are moving in that direction [of turning peaceful protests into civil war] very quickly without realizing that they’re actually coming very quickly towards the end of their [rule] which will end up in their demise,” he warned.

The ruling family, he added, in Manama has no ideological or solid basis, because “Bahrain is run by a family which is not even from Bahrain.”

The analyst further criticized the United Kingdom and the United States for their role in preserving despotic regimes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Britain is assisting the Manama regime to suppress Bahraini protestors, because the UK thinks it is still an empire, Hassanally argued.

The British do not want to lose their under-construction military base in Bahrain and the Americans do not want to lose their existing military base there; thus, they are “appeasing” the Manama regime, he concluded.

Anti-regime protesters have held demonstrations on an almost daily basis ever since the popular uprising began in Bahrain in February 2011.

They are demanding that the Al Khalifah family relinquish power and let a just system representing all Bahrainis be established.

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