[CNN] Breaking News: Doctors and Nurses on Trial in Bahrain

“We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery,” 

Ayat al-Gormezi is a 20-year old woman from Bahrain who was arrested for reading her poetry that was against the monarchy at a protest in February. She is still under arrest and has not been seen since April, the Independent says that she is being tortured.

During this time of revolution and conflict, we should remember the power of our words, the power we may not even be aware of. 

Eyewitness: Bahrain didn’t invite the Saudis to send their troops; the Saudis invaded and received a post-dated invitation

Has the Khalifa family gone mad? Yesterday, the Bahraini royal family started an utterly fraudulent trial of 48 surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses, accusing them of trying to topple the tin-pot monarchy of this Sunni minority emirate. The defendants in this flagrantly unfair military court are, of course, members of the majority Shia people of Bahrain. And since I was a witness to their heroic efforts to save lives in February, I can say – let us speak with a frankness that the Bahraini rulers would normally demand – that the charges are a pack of lies.

Doctors I saw, drenched in their patients’ blood, desperately trying to staunch the bullet wounds of pro-democracy demonstrators shot in cold blood by Bahraini soldiers and police, are now on trial. I watched armed policemen refusing to allow ambulances to collect the wounded from the roads where they had been cut down.

These are the very same doctors and nurses I stood beside four months ago in the Sulaimaniya emergency room, some of them weeping as they tried to deal with gunshot wounds the like of which they had never seen before.

“How could they do this to these people?” one of them asked me. “We have never dealt with trauma wounds like these before.” Next to us lay a man with bullet wounds in the chest and thigh, coughing blood on to the floor.

The surgeons were frightened that they did not have the skills to save these victims of police violence. Now the police have accused the doctors and staff of killing the patients whom the police themselves shot.

How could these fine medical men and women have been trying to “topple” the monarchy?

The idea that these 48 defendants are guilty of such a vicious charge is not just preposterous. It is insane, a total perversion – no, the total opposite – of the truth. The police were firing at demonstrators from helicopters.

The idea that a woman and child died because they were rejected by doctors and refused medical treatment is a fantasy. The only problems medical staff encountered at the Sulaimaniya hospital – and again, I was a witness and, unlike the Bahraini security authorities, I do not tell lies – was from the cruel policemen who blocked patients from reaching the medical facility.

In truth, of course, the Khalifa family is not mad. Nor are the Sunni minority of Bahrain intrinsically bad or sectarian. The reality is clear for anyone to see in Bahrain. The Saudis are now running the country. They never received an invitation to send their own soldiers to support the Bahraini “security forces” from the Bahraini Crown Prince, who is a decent man. They simply invaded and received a post-dated invitation.

The subsequent destruction of ancient Shia mosques in Bahrain was a Saudi project, entirely in line with the kingdom’s Taliban-style hatred of all things Shia. Could the Bahraini prime minister be elected, I asked a member of the royal court last February? “The Saudis would not permit this,” he replied. Of course not. Because they now control Bahrain. Hence the Saudi-style doctors’ trial.

Bahrain is no longer the kingdom of the Khalifas. It has become a Saudi palatinate, a confederated province of Saudi Arabia, a pocket-size weasel state from which all journalists should in future use the dateline: Manama, Occupied Bahrain.

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http://byshr.org/wp-content/letter-to-UN.pdf

This is a letter that has been  sent to the Secretary of The United Nations Ban Ki-moon. Read it and spread it. Darwish, Jawad, and Alkhawaja are in the UN ofice in Bahrain, they are protesting and planning a sit-in. Pray for their safety….

We support you with all our hearts

stand up for your right

Arab spring:

An amazing interactive timeline of the Middle East protests by the Guardian News.

Front Line is concerned about the bringing to trial before a military court of a prominent Bahraini lawyer and human rights defender. On 12 June Mohammed Al-Tajir was brought before the Bahraini Lower National Safety Court in Manama to face a number of charges including publicly inciting hatred of the system of government in Bahrain; spreading malicious news and propaganda; and publicly inciting the abduction and harming of security men.

Further Information

The sudden appearance of Mohammed Al-Tajir before the military court came after more than five weeks of incommunicado detention in an unknown location. During this period Mohammed Al -Tajir had been held without access to his lawyers and family and it is feared that the charges brought against him may have been based on confessions extracted under duress. There are also fears that he may have been forced to incriminate himself. The military prosecution told the court that it had concluded that the statements obtained from the accused during the interrogations are sufficient as evidence to indict him, and that the prosecution shall reserve the right to present its closing remarks on the case.

Mohammed Al -Tajir who was not allowed access to legal counsel during the interrogation denied all charges brought against him. The trial was adjourned until 16 June 2011. There have been credible reports of torture and ill-treatment of human rights defenders and other prisoners currently being tried by the military court. The court has so far failed to investigate claims of torture and ill-treatment brought before it by the accused.

Mohammed Al-Tajir was the subject of a Front Line urgent appeal dated 18 April 2011. Front Line reiterates its calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Mohammed Al-Tajir and to immediately and unconditionally drop all charges against him as it is believed that his arrest, detention and the charges brought against him are solely related to his legitimate and peaceful work in defence of human rights and his lawful pursuit of his profession as a lawyer.

See here the original appeal on this case

[CNN] Breaking News: Doctors and Nurses on Trial in Bahrain:

Video included.