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Too lazy to set a custom title
Industry Role:
Join Date: May 2001
Location: My network is hosted at TECHIEMEDIA.net ...Wait, you meant where am *I* located at? Oh... okay, I'm in Winnipeg, Canada. Oops. :)
Posts: 51,460
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In today's NY Times:
MANAMA, Bahrain — Thousands of jubilant protesters surged back into the symbolic heart of Bahrain on Saturday as the government withdrew its security forces, calling for calm after days of violent crackdowns.
It was a remarkable turn after a week of protests that had shifted by the hour between joy and fear, euphoric surges of people power followed by bloody military crackdowns, as the monarchy struggled to calibrate a response to an uprising whose counterparts have toppled other governments in the region.
“All Bahrain is happy today,” said Jasim al-Haiki, 24, as he cheered the crowds in the central Pearl Square, aflutter with Bahraini flags. “These are Bahrainis. They do what they say they will do!”
The shift in this tiny Persian Gulf nation, a strategic American ally, was at least a temporary victory for the Shiite protesters, who had rejected a call to negotiate from Bahrain’s Sunni monarch until the authorities pulled the military off the streets.
But the events here were being watched with trepidation in neighboring Saudi Arabia, an adjacent Sunni monarchy with a restive Shiite population, and rippling across the region, where an extraordinary few weeks of antigovernment protests have ricocheted from northwest Africa to the Middle East.
Antigovernment demonstrations erupted again on Saturday in Libya, Algeria and Yemen, with each of those governments turning to violence to stop the protests. The worst carnage was in Libya, where security forces fired on protesters in Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city, killing dozens and pushing the death toll after three days of demonstrations to over 100.
In Algiers, protesters were quickly routed by hundreds of baton-wielding police officers. In Yemen, after both sides clashed in a hail of bottles, shoes and rocks, government supporters opened fire on antigovernment demonstrators, wounding at least four.
In Bahrain, the day started out with a lull, as both sides appeared to have been rattled by the violence of the past week, in which at least seven people were killed. The leaders of the major opposition parties called off the protests for Saturday, telling the public to stay home in an effort to lower the temperature.
But in what appeared to be a measure of who controls the movement now, the people ignored their ostensible leaders. Marchers set out from villages and the city center and by midday converged on Pearl Square.
The police met them with tear gas and rubber bullets. Young men collapsed in the road and others ran for cover, but people kept coming.
The police fired again.
Then the government blinked, perhaps sensing that the only way to calm a spiral of violence that claimed more lives with each passing day was to cede the square to the protesters.
The police left so suddenly and so completely that it took a minute for the protesters, still rubbing the tear gas out of their eyes, to realize they once again controlled the square.
By early evening, tens of thousands of people were pouring into the square, waving flags, some dropping to the ground to pray, and others shouting congratulations to each other. Marching past pools of blood on the road, they savored a moment of bittersweet jubilation, a mix of disbelief and sheer joy that they had prevailed, tempered with sadness for those who had been killed.
“Of course we are happy,” said Hassan al-Freidi, 53. “But I want to tell you: not yet. Today we’re mourning and honoring our martyrs; it is about joy and mourning. But it’ll only be about joy when we get our rights. And I know this day will come. Bullets do not scare us.”
The protesters won the battle on Saturday, although it was still not clear where it would all lead. The government had relinquished the square before, on Wednesday, only to return with a deadly assault on Thursday. On Friday, the army opened fire on a group of about 1,000 peaceful demonstrators trying to walk into the square.
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To the north, Kuwait also has a Sunni monarchy and a restive Shiite population. The big fear among Sunni governments is that Bahrain, once part of Persia, could become another Iran, where the Islamic revolution of 1979 produced a bellicose Shiite theocracy.
But the Shiite protesters here insist their revolt is secular and democratic. When the protests started on Feb. 14, in a so-called Day of Rage modeled after events in Egypt and Tunisia, demonstrators called for a constitutional monarchy, an elected cabinet and a constitution written by the people, as opposed to one imposed by the king.
After two protesters were killed in the first two days, both shot in the back by the police, an infuriated and reinvigorated opposition added a new demand: an end to the monarchy.
Interesting stuff there. While a lot of people even in this thread insist it's more of the same religion-based uprisings (much like in Iran's past etc) many of the protestors themselves seem to insist their cause is secular in nature.
I wonder who to believe? |