Angry Arab's chief Bahrain correspondent adds more comments on the report: "I skimmed the report. Here are my comments:
- The Commission was established under a royal mandate. If you read the section on the mandate you will realize a couple of things:
A) the mandate implies that the King will not be investigated. The Commission operates under the assumption that the King is innocent. In addition, the Commission is paid for by the King. Therefore, the results of the Commission's report will necessarily be different from the results of a truly independent commission.
B) The Commission must provide both a context in which the events occured and investigate the violations. They must do this under a specific time frame. There is no way they can come up with an accurate narrative and a context within such a short time frame. We already know that the Commission employees worked very long hours and were overwhelmed by the task they had.
- The Commission's investigation occurred under a climate of fear. Arrests and attacks continued to take place during the investigation. As a result, many people were too scared to file a complaint with the commission. I personally do not know anyone who filed a complaint with the Commission. In addition, Bassiouni's numerous interviews with the press and the statements that he made eroded the peoples trust in the Commission and confirmed the pre-existing perception that Bassiouni would be biased towards the government.
- The Commission's narrative concerning the events at the hospital contradicted the reports published by Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and Doctors without Borders. All three organizations were present in Bahrain during the period of marshall law. Since the case of the doctors caused so much international outrage, the government spent a lot of effort fabricating evidence regarding the events that took place in the main hospital. The Commission also ignores the military takeover of one of the village clinics, the destruction of another clinic, and the attack of the private Bahrain International Hospital.
- The report makes mention of unamed groups that attack and in some instances kill civilians. The unnamed groups are the government Baltajiya. Bahrainis cannot carry weapons of any kind. The Commission did not mention this. As a result, the people conducting the attacks must either part of the security forces or must have been given weapons by the regime.
- The use of force against civilians was downplayed. The Commission makes no mention of jets and helicopters flying very low in villages. It states that there is no evidence of a systemic policy on behalf of the BDF and the security forces. It does talk about the excessive use of teargas and the disproportionate use of force in some instances.
- As I said previously, the report fails to state that there was a systemic policy by the government to crush the protest movement. However this could be because the time frame they were given and not because they were unsincere.
- The sections on the dismissed employees, dismissed students, arrests, and torture were all fair.
- The Commission downplays the destruction of the mosques stating that several of the mosques did not have permits. What it fails to state is that many mosques were built before permits even existed, there are many buildings in Bahrain that exist without permits, and the implementation of laws concerning permits is inconsistent. To its credit, the commission does mention that there is some confusion due to the fact that the mosques were under the authority of the Jafari waqf which is a semigovermental authority (need to study bahrains history to know why that is). It also does mention the contradiction in the explanations given by the government regarding the destruction of the mosques: they sometimes say that they were destroyed because they had no permit and at other times said that they were destroyed because they supposedly were hiding weapons.
- The Commission says that the media did use derogatory speech but there was no evidence of hate speech or incitements of violence. The Commission did talk about the @7areghum twitter account which identified protestors and incited hatred. It did not connect the account to the Ministry of Interior although it did state that @7areghum asked people to provide him with names and that those names will be passed to the relevant authorities. The Commission ignores threatening statements by royal family members such as that of the Kings son Nasser Bin Hamed threatening to clear Bahrain of the protestors. The Commission also ignores statements by important figures such as Adel Fleifel in which he threatens violence against protestors and talks about the creation of sunni militias.
- The Commission states that there is no evidence that the Pennisula Shield used any force against civilians. This contradicts what many people I know personally have experienced.
- The Commission also states that there is no evidence of Iranian involvement.
- The Commission for some reason concludes that the opposition rejected dialogue. But if you read the pages of the report concerning the dialogue with the Crown Prince you will see that the opposition did not only enter into a dialogue with the Crown Prince but it also accepted a US proposal which the government rejected. I suggest you read this section. It is the most interesting section of the report.
- The narrative concerning the protests is also an interesting read. I skimmed through it so I cannot comment properly but the report does state many truths: the protests were inspired by the Arab spring and had its roots in Bahrains political context and the protestors had local grievences, the protests were not sectarian, the protests were not started by the legal opposition groups, the first death caused the protests to swell in number, the protestors were first calling for reforms but then started calling for a republic because of the governments violent response, and the coalition for a republic did not call for an islamic republic.
- there are inconsistencies between the english version of the report and the arabic version of the report. For example, the arabic version mentions the ridiculous 12 point flag. The arabic version did not.
- The Commission does not address allegations that I believe 3 royal family members including the Kings son Nasser Bin Hamad directly tortured prisoners.
- Commission recommendations are weak. There should be immediate reinstatement of dismissed workers and students and immediate release of prisoners and the dropping of all charges. We do not need to establish an independent commission to investigate this.
- All in all the report indicates that excessive force against protestors were used and that the protestors were protesting within their rights. It accuses the government of torture, creating a culture of fear, mass arrests and the disproportionate use of force. If this is the case then there are only two conclusions that I can reach: Either the King did not know what was going on (difficult for a country as tiny as Bahrain) or had no power to stop it and is therefore incompetent.. If this is the case then he should not be allowed to rule. Or everything that happened occured under the Kings blessing. Also, if a Commission appointed by and paid by the King, operating under a time limit, and in an atmosphere of mistrust and continued violations reached these conclusions, what conclusions would a truly independent commission trusted by the people and operating at a time of peace reach??
- The conclusions of the report are dangerous for the government despite the reports weaknesses. Since iranian involvement is the main reason given for Saudi involvement and the crackdown, the regime is now put on the defensive. Also the regime denied the use of excessive force and torture. Its main reason for firing the workers is that the strike was not within the law. This will also have repucussions for the case brought by the main labor union in the US against Bahrain in which they claim that Bahrain violated the provisions of the free trade agreement. Saudi and Bahraini media are freaking out and publishing lies about what the report said or focusing on small sections of the report that criticize the protestors.
The state deparment and the white house's press releases urge the Bahraini government to implement the recommendations of the Commission. What they are forgetting here is that the problem is political. Compensating the families of the dead and establishing laws against torture will not stop the protests. You must remember that Bahrainis were fooled by the King before when he imposed the 2002 constitution on us.
The report is obviously flawed - the commission isn't independent. It is created by the King. Why do people like ignoring that? I honestly don't understand why any self respecting human rights lawyer would have agreed to be part of this commission but for some reason these commissioners did. Now, I wouldn't have this big of a problem with the report if the Commission clearly stated the parameters of the investigation. They should have stated clearly that they will not be investigating the king and that they are operating under the premise that he has nothing to do with the crackdown. Of course the nature of the investigation implies this but they did not state this clearly.
- The Commission was established under a royal mandate. If you read the section on the mandate you will realize a couple of things:
A) the mandate implies that the King will not be investigated. The Commission operates under the assumption that the King is innocent. In addition, the Commission is paid for by the King. Therefore, the results of the Commission's report will necessarily be different from the results of a truly independent commission.
B) The Commission must provide both a context in which the events occured and investigate the violations. They must do this under a specific time frame. There is no way they can come up with an accurate narrative and a context within such a short time frame. We already know that the Commission employees worked very long hours and were overwhelmed by the task they had.
- The Commission's investigation occurred under a climate of fear. Arrests and attacks continued to take place during the investigation. As a result, many people were too scared to file a complaint with the commission. I personally do not know anyone who filed a complaint with the Commission. In addition, Bassiouni's numerous interviews with the press and the statements that he made eroded the peoples trust in the Commission and confirmed the pre-existing perception that Bassiouni would be biased towards the government.
- The Commission's narrative concerning the events at the hospital contradicted the reports published by Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and Doctors without Borders. All three organizations were present in Bahrain during the period of marshall law. Since the case of the doctors caused so much international outrage, the government spent a lot of effort fabricating evidence regarding the events that took place in the main hospital. The Commission also ignores the military takeover of one of the village clinics, the destruction of another clinic, and the attack of the private Bahrain International Hospital.
- The report makes mention of unamed groups that attack and in some instances kill civilians. The unnamed groups are the government Baltajiya. Bahrainis cannot carry weapons of any kind. The Commission did not mention this. As a result, the people conducting the attacks must either part of the security forces or must have been given weapons by the regime.
- The use of force against civilians was downplayed. The Commission makes no mention of jets and helicopters flying very low in villages. It states that there is no evidence of a systemic policy on behalf of the BDF and the security forces. It does talk about the excessive use of teargas and the disproportionate use of force in some instances.
- As I said previously, the report fails to state that there was a systemic policy by the government to crush the protest movement. However this could be because the time frame they were given and not because they were unsincere.
- The sections on the dismissed employees, dismissed students, arrests, and torture were all fair.
- The Commission downplays the destruction of the mosques stating that several of the mosques did not have permits. What it fails to state is that many mosques were built before permits even existed, there are many buildings in Bahrain that exist without permits, and the implementation of laws concerning permits is inconsistent. To its credit, the commission does mention that there is some confusion due to the fact that the mosques were under the authority of the Jafari waqf which is a semigovermental authority (need to study bahrains history to know why that is). It also does mention the contradiction in the explanations given by the government regarding the destruction of the mosques: they sometimes say that they were destroyed because they had no permit and at other times said that they were destroyed because they supposedly were hiding weapons.
- The Commission says that the media did use derogatory speech but there was no evidence of hate speech or incitements of violence. The Commission did talk about the @7areghum twitter account which identified protestors and incited hatred. It did not connect the account to the Ministry of Interior although it did state that @7areghum asked people to provide him with names and that those names will be passed to the relevant authorities. The Commission ignores threatening statements by royal family members such as that of the Kings son Nasser Bin Hamed threatening to clear Bahrain of the protestors. The Commission also ignores statements by important figures such as Adel Fleifel in which he threatens violence against protestors and talks about the creation of sunni militias.
- The Commission states that there is no evidence that the Pennisula Shield used any force against civilians. This contradicts what many people I know personally have experienced.
- The Commission also states that there is no evidence of Iranian involvement.
- The Commission for some reason concludes that the opposition rejected dialogue. But if you read the pages of the report concerning the dialogue with the Crown Prince you will see that the opposition did not only enter into a dialogue with the Crown Prince but it also accepted a US proposal which the government rejected. I suggest you read this section. It is the most interesting section of the report.
- The narrative concerning the protests is also an interesting read. I skimmed through it so I cannot comment properly but the report does state many truths: the protests were inspired by the Arab spring and had its roots in Bahrains political context and the protestors had local grievences, the protests were not sectarian, the protests were not started by the legal opposition groups, the first death caused the protests to swell in number, the protestors were first calling for reforms but then started calling for a republic because of the governments violent response, and the coalition for a republic did not call for an islamic republic.
- there are inconsistencies between the english version of the report and the arabic version of the report. For example, the arabic version mentions the ridiculous 12 point flag. The arabic version did not.
- The Commission does not address allegations that I believe 3 royal family members including the Kings son Nasser Bin Hamad directly tortured prisoners.
- Commission recommendations are weak. There should be immediate reinstatement of dismissed workers and students and immediate release of prisoners and the dropping of all charges. We do not need to establish an independent commission to investigate this.
- All in all the report indicates that excessive force against protestors were used and that the protestors were protesting within their rights. It accuses the government of torture, creating a culture of fear, mass arrests and the disproportionate use of force. If this is the case then there are only two conclusions that I can reach: Either the King did not know what was going on (difficult for a country as tiny as Bahrain) or had no power to stop it and is therefore incompetent.. If this is the case then he should not be allowed to rule. Or everything that happened occured under the Kings blessing. Also, if a Commission appointed by and paid by the King, operating under a time limit, and in an atmosphere of mistrust and continued violations reached these conclusions, what conclusions would a truly independent commission trusted by the people and operating at a time of peace reach??
- The conclusions of the report are dangerous for the government despite the reports weaknesses. Since iranian involvement is the main reason given for Saudi involvement and the crackdown, the regime is now put on the defensive. Also the regime denied the use of excessive force and torture. Its main reason for firing the workers is that the strike was not within the law. This will also have repucussions for the case brought by the main labor union in the US against Bahrain in which they claim that Bahrain violated the provisions of the free trade agreement. Saudi and Bahraini media are freaking out and publishing lies about what the report said or focusing on small sections of the report that criticize the protestors.
The state deparment and the white house's press releases urge the Bahraini government to implement the recommendations of the Commission. What they are forgetting here is that the problem is political. Compensating the families of the dead and establishing laws against torture will not stop the protests. You must remember that Bahrainis were fooled by the King before when he imposed the 2002 constitution on us.
The report is obviously flawed - the commission isn't independent. It is created by the King. Why do people like ignoring that? I honestly don't understand why any self respecting human rights lawyer would have agreed to be part of this commission but for some reason these commissioners did. Now, I wouldn't have this big of a problem with the report if the Commission clearly stated the parameters of the investigation. They should have stated clearly that they will not be investigating the king and that they are operating under the premise that he has nothing to do with the crackdown. Of course the nature of the investigation implies this but they did not state this clearly.
Now even if we ignore this obvious flaw,they could have made bold recommendations. A bold recommendation would be to call for the resignation of the entire government - even if the report did not establish a clear link (for obvious political reasons) between the violations and the government, the fact that all of this occurred at the very least proves that the government is incompetent. Lets say they don't want to be this bold: The least they should have called for an immediate reinstatement of the workers and students, the release of all prisoners and the dropping of all charges.A lot of people that I talked to are more positive on the report than I am. They believe that the report can be used to force the government to resign. I do see their point - it has a lot of good things and Omar AlShehabi did outline them in his article. But to do that they would have to make a legal argument and that will take time. The report leaves it up to you to make the conclusions - of course for people against the government the conclusions are obvious. But since they are not clearly written down the government can buy time and argue otherwise as they are doing now.
I agree with what Mansour AlJamri said in the article by Anthony Shadid. Since the Commission recommended that they establish a "committee" thats what will happen. The government will keep establishing committees to buy time. I can see that happening - look at how they are reacting. They are now claiming that they have classified evidence that the protesters have links to Iran even though this is not the case. The only way the King can possibly pull this off (i.e. exonerate himself and the monarchy) is if, and only if, he quickly reinstated the workers, released the prisoners, dropped all charges, and forced the government to resign. Now even if he did that he would still have to step down because no one wants him anymore, even the people who would be satisfied with a constitutional monarchy. But instead they are talking about establishing committees. Meanwhile, people are still protesting. They are still being attacked.
I do not like the opposition's initial response (haven't been keeping up with the news so maybe that changed). They should have simply stated that the report more or less what they have been saying for months and then just reiterated their demands. Instead they are saying that they want the UN to form the committee instead of the government. Come on.. we don't need any committees. What needs to happen is obvious.
As for the article you linked to, why is he putting the burden on the people? The government hasn't made any concessions so far except for this commission which told us what we already now.Also - people have moved beyond the solutions that this commission can bring. I mean if the recommendations were implemented before Feb 14 this would have been great. Now this is a full blown uprising. Don't know how it will end. We are a small country - only 1 million people. Only half are Bahrainis. They expats are mostly pro-government or are neutral or silent. Thats a lot of people. On top of that you have a vocal sizable minority that is pro-government. You also have a rapid illegal political naturalization program which is changing the demographie country to make sure that the majority in the country is pro-monarchy. "
