{"id":14923,"date":"2012-05-09T12:04:37","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T20:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=14923"},"modified":"2012-05-09T12:05:04","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T20:05:04","slug":"what-protests-in-bahrain-are-really-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/09\/what-protests-in-bahrain-are-really-about\/","title":{"rendered":"What Protests in Bahrain Are Really About"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joost Hiltermann <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/blogs\/nyrblog\/2012\/may\/08\/bahrain-new-sectarian-conflict\/\">writes in the New York Review of Books blog<\/a> about his recent trip to Bahrain:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Talking to dozens of people both in Manama and in smaller communities outside the capital, I was told again and again that the situation was becoming worse, not better: police forces have been using large quantities of tear gas against protesters, repeatedly causing deaths; police brutality had not ended but moved from police stations to alleyways and undeclared detention centers; young activists are increasingly resorting to Molotov cocktails, subverting the peaceful nature of the protests; and the government has not opened any dialogue with the opposition or offered hope for political reform.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hiltermann explains how this narrative of sectarianism and of an encroaching Iran on the Shiite protesters is not a reality on the ground, although it is peddled by the regime which is desperate to conceal the fact that the protest movement in Bahrain really is about reforming a corrupt dictatorship. And of course there is the added benefit of trying to convince the U.S. that any harm to the regime will be a benefit to the ultimate bogeyman, Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the regime has promised <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2012\/05\/08\/bahrain-vows-harsher-crackdown\/\">enough messing around<\/a>. After a year of killing and beating and torturing and repressing the population, they are apparently preparing for an even harsher crackdown. But you can bet support from Washington will continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joost Hiltermann writes in the New York Review of Books blog about his recent trip to Bahrain: Talking to dozens of people both in Manama and in smaller communities outside the capital, I was told again and again that the situation was becoming worse, not better: police forces have been using large quantities of tear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14925,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923\/revisions\/14925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14923"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}