Torture and draconian sentences for protestors in Bahrain

From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 5 November

Having with the help of the Saudi army put down the Arab spring protests of the downtrodden masses of Bahrain, the authorities, who were clearly terrified by the popular uprising, are now turning on anti-government activists quite literally with a vengeance.

In a country whose population is only half a million, 34 people have been killed, over 1,400 have been arrested and 3,600 have been fired from their jobs. Those arrested have been subjected to torture, of which four have already died. Among those arrested were dozens of doctors and nurses from the Salmaniya Medical Complex (Bahrain’s largest public hospital), who have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment between five and 15 years for treating demonstrators wounded by violent attempts to disperse them. Eight prominent protest leaders have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

The sentencing of medical personnel is all part of a government campaign to deny medical treatment to anybody injured in the ongoing and growing protests. However, the punishment meted out to the doctors and nurses so clearly exposes the fascistic nature of a regime that western imperialism is anxious to support that pressure has been brought on the Bahraini government to back down. As a result, it has announced that the cases are to be re-tried.