Boogai: More information our U.S. mainstream media is conveniently NOT covering – even more geographical and physical sectarian chaos in the Middle East:  human rights transgressions in Bahrain perpetrated by a Sunni-muslim-dominated government against its two-thirds Shia-muslim inhabitants.  H/t to firedoglake.

By Siun, Firedoglake.com
Last week at this time, the Bahraini government was “celebrating” their Formula One race by arresting a British Channel 4 television news crew who attempted to report on conditions in the country. The video here is the report they have now been able to file with footage smuggled out when they were deported.  Link to footage is here:

http://bcove.me/xj9ciyiy

Just how bad conditions are in Bahrain were further confirmed by today’s publication of a new report from Human Rights Watch, Bahrain: Police Brutality, Despite Reform Pledges in which HRW reports on the current status of the promised “reform” in Bahrain with accounts such as this:

Mohammed and Ali, both 20, who are not identified by their real names for their security, described their ordeal when riot police detained them and three others at a protest in Sanabis on February 11 and transferred them to a youth hostel that had been transformed into an informal police facility…

I had lost my shoes and could feel grass beneath my feet. With my hands cuffed behind my back, they made me kneel and bend over and they started kicking me and beating me with sticks. Someone said: “Finished.” Another voice said: “Too early, continue.” They then removed all my clothes, apart from the tee shirt that they had turned on my head, and laughed at me. They then put my pants back on and asked me to pray. As I leaned forward, I and the other prisoner were kicked from behind and we fell forward into a swimming pool, still with hands cuffed. The pool was shallow, so I was able to stand but the water was cold – it was a particularly chilly evening. When I fell into the pool, my tee shirt hood came down and I could see policemen standing around the pool.

Ali said police pulled him out of the pool by his hair and beat him again, on his forearms and knees, with sticks.

And not only demonstrators are under threat:

A gym owned by a member of Bahrain’s Parliament was riddled with 30 bullets, several days after the lawmaker called for the removal of the country’s prime minister.

The attack was an assassination attempt, Osama al-Tamimi, a Sunni Muslim, said in a telephone interview today. It was linked to his call at a Parliament session last week for the departure of Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, premier for more than four decades, he said.

“This was a message to anyone trying to touch on this subject,” al-Tamimi said.

The Bahraini government has set tomorrow as the date when Abdul-Hadi AlKhawaja and his thirteen human rights colleagues will have the appeal of their life sentences heard and also tomorrow, AlKhawaja’s daughter Zeinab (@angryarabiya) will appear in court after her protest last week to attempt to locate and see her father.

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