Bahrain king approves US$16.4b spending for two years

Bahrain’s king has approved a budget of US$16.44 billion (RM49.34 billion) over the next two years, a finance ministry spokesman said today — a 44 per cent rise in expenditure in the kingdom, hit by political unrest earlier this year.

“The king passed the law for the budget for 2011 and 2012 . . . it will approve expenditures for 6.198 billion Bahraini dinars,” a ministry spokesman told Reuters.

Facing a rising subsidies bill and dragged down by its struggling banking sector, the small non-OPEC energy producer has the weakest fiscal position among Gulf Arab nations.



The tiny Gulf island kingdom was dealt a further blow after weeks of anti-government protests in February and March that led to an imposition of emergency law, which it revoked last week.

Analysts polled by Reuters expected Bahrain to post deficits of 1.4 per cent of gross domestic product in 2011 and 1.7 per cent for 2012.

Bahrain king says forces have foiled foreign plot

Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa said a foreign plot against his kingdom had been foiled and thanked troops brought in from neighbouring countries to help end increasing unrest after weeks of protests.

"An external plot has been fomented for 20 to 30 years until the ground was ripe for subversive designs ... I here announce the failure of the fomented plot," the state news agency BNA quoted him overnight as telling troops.

King Hamad (picture) told the forces that such if such a plot succeeded in one Gulf Arab country, it could spill into neighbouring states, BNA said.





The ferocity of a crackdown last week by Bahrain forces, aided by the entrance of troops from Sunni-ruled Gulf countries, stunned Bahrain's majority Shi'ites, the main force of the protests, and angered the region's non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran.

Iran, which supports Shi'ite groups in Iraq and Lebanon, has complained to the United Nations and asked neighbours to join it in urging Saudi Arabia to withdraw forces from Bahrain.

King Hamad's announcement came after a day of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions between the Gulf island kingdom and Iran.

In a sign of rising tensions between the countries, Bahrain expelled Iran's charge d'affaires yesterday, accusing him of contacts with some opposition groups, a diplomatic source said.

He left shortly after the Iranian ambassador, asked to leave last week. Iran expelled a Bahraini diplomat in response.

Bahrain has also said previously that it arrested opposition leaders for dealing with foreign countries.

Bahrainis to bury dead protester amid crackdown

Armoured vehicles belonging to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) military forces guard the entrance to Pearl Square in Manama March 17, 2011.


Hundreds of Bahrainis gathered today to bury an activist killed in a crackdown on mainly Shi’ite Muslim protesters that has angered Iran and raised tensions in the world’s largest oil-exporting region.

Mourners carrying black flags and pictures of activist Ahmed Farhan, who was killed on Wednesday, waited at the cemetery for his body to arrive. No security forces were present and it was unclear if police would disperse the mourners under a blanket ban on public gatherings.



“This is a big loss... They can say what they want about us but we are non-violent. We will never use violence,” said Yousif Hasan Ali, who was in jail with Farhan, 30, for over two years.

“They may silence this generation but another will rise up to demand revenge for the blood that was shed now.”

Bahrain has arrested seven opposition leaders and driven pro-democracy demonstrators from the streets after weeks of protests that drew in troops from its fellow Sunni-ruled neighbors and prompted the king to declare martial law.

Three protesters died in the security sweep. Three policemen also were killed, hit by demonstrators in fast-moving cars.

The crackdown has drawn sympathy protests from Shi’ites across the region, including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, which has sent more than 1,000 troops into its tiny neighbor.

Shi’ite Muslim power Iran, which supports Shi’ite groups in Iraq and Lebanon, has complained to the United Nations and asked other neighbors to join it in urging Saudi Arabia to withdraw.

Its call was echoed yesterday by Sheikh Ali Salman, leader of Bahrain’s largest Shi’ite Muslim party Wefaq.

“How could one accept a government to invite foreign military forces to suppress its own citizens?” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, also addressed to the Arab League.

In a sign that tensions were rising, Bahrain said: “Iran’s move does not serve security and stability in the Gulf region.”

Over 60 per cent of Bahrainis are Shi’ites. Most are campaigning for a constitutional monarchy, but calls by hardliners for the overthrow of the monarchy have alarmed Sunnis, who fear the unrest serves Iran, located across a short stretch of Gulf waters from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Bahraini state TV called the detainees leaders of “civil strife” and said they had been communicating with foreign countries and inciting murder and destruction of properties.

It did not name the countries. Analysts say the intervention of Saudi Arabia, which is worried Bahraini unrest will incite its own Shi’ite minority, risks a growing standoff with Iran.

Oil prices rose on Thursday on growing geopolitical tension in the Middle East and North Africa.

Capital flight is starting to put pressure on Bahrain’s currency and threaten its position as a Gulf financial center.

Most Western nations have urged their citizens to leave.

FRIDAY PRAYERS

The ferocity of the crackdown, which has seen troops and police fan out across Bahrain, impose a curfew and ban all public gatherings and marches, has stunned Bahrain’s Shi’ites.

Yesterday, opposition activists told a news conference they would press on with peaceful resistance, holding a sit-in inside the mosques after Friday prayers, standing outside their homes at certain hours and flying the flag from their rooftops.

Wefaq supporters will also call Allahu Akbar, or God is Great, from their rooftops at night in peaceful resistance.

It was not clear what else they could do without provoking a confrontation and some ordinary Shi’ites said they were waiting for guidance from Sheikh Issa Qassim, the country’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, who is due to give a sermon on Friday.

“We are waiting to see what Sheikh Issa Qassim says,” Hussein al-Ali, from a Shi’ite Muslim area near Sar, said.

Among those detained overnight were Haq leader Hassan Mushaima and Wafa leader Abdel Wahhab Hussein, who had led calls for the overthrow of the royal family, Wefaq officials said.

More moderate Wefaq had limited its demands to political and constitutional reform. Also arrested was Ibrahim Sharif, head of the secular Left party Waad that had the same demands as Wefaq.

In Geneva, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged Bahrain on Thursday to rein in its security forces, citing allegations that they had killed, beaten and carried out arbitrary arrests of protesters and attacked medical workers.

Yesterday, more than a dozen casualties who had been taken to Bahrain International Hospital during the crackdown were gone. Nurses said they had mostly been suffering from teargas inhalation and cuts and bruises. The wards were empty.

Tanks were still guarding the entrances to Salmaniya hospital on Thursday and slowing entry down with searches, after raiding the compound during the crackdown to clear tents that had been set up in the car park by opposition activists.

Bahrain government tears down statue used as focus for pro-democracy protests

* Pearl Square statue used by Shiite protesters as gathering point
* 1,500-strong security force maintains strict curfew in capital Manama
* Five people killed in violent clashes with pro-democracy protesters
* Outlying towns braced for more violence over the weekend

This is the moment Bahrain officials tore down an iconic statue that has been a focal point for weeks of pro-democracy protests.

Drills and diggers were used to cut away at the six bases of the statue in Pearl Square, Manama, before it collapsed to the ground in a mound of rubble and steel bars.

The tiny Gulf kingdom government had trucks on standby to take away the debris as it removed all traces of what had become a symbol of the protest movement.

Clashes: Protesters gather in Pearl Square before marching through the city

Barricades: Security forces block off access roads to Pearl Square, with the statue in the background

Flash point: Smoke rises from burning tents as Bahrain security forces clash with protesters in Pearl Square

As it was: The statue featured sweeping steel beams and was used by Shiite protesters as they gathered for rallies.Torn down: Trucks standing by were then used to cart the piles of steel and rubble away from the square.Symbol: The government of Bahrain uses drills and diggers to collapse a statue in Pearl Square, Manama, the focal point for pro-democracy protests this week

It comes after Bahrain forces backed by Saudi allies expanded a crackdown on the month-long protests over rights and the Sunni monarchy.

Bahrain's royal family has gambled that it can survive sectarian fault lines that divide the kingdom with the help of a 1,500-strong force led by the Saudis.

But residents of Sitra and other Shiite villages outside the capital are bracing for more violence.

A curfew has been installed in the capital to prevent protests taking place, but opposition leaders sent text messages to supporters asking them to shout from the rooftops every night 'to tell the army your tanks cannot silence us'.

The U.S. has made Bahrain home to the Navy's 5th Fleet, counting on the Sunni rulers who endured Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution and unrest among the Shiite majority.

But the ruling system - which just two weeks ago appealed for negotiations with Shiites - now appears to be trying to crush the opposition, imposing a three-month emergency rule that gives the military wide powers to tackle the pro-democracy uprising inspired by revolts across the Arab world.

Shiites account for 70 per cent of the total population of 500,000, but are widely excluded from high-level posts.

Riot police fired tear gas at protesters trying to stage a march in the Shiite suburb of Jidhafs, just half a mile from Pearl Square.

Residents tried to block police vehicles with makeshift barriers including metal tables, gym weights and bits of wood.

Security forces overwhelmed parts of Manama and nearly all banks and shops were closed. The curfew extends from 8pm to 4am.

The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights said those detained included Hassan Mushaima and Abdul Jalil al-Sangaece - who were among 25 Shiite activists facing charges of trying to overthrow the monarchy.

The case was dropped to calm tensions, but further arrests suggest authorities have abandoned efforts at dialogue.

The British Foreign Office was left embarrassed after it laid on two flights to Dubai from the Gulf state, but Britons refused to pay the £260 cost for a seat.

More flights are due to arrive in the country over the weekend.

 Lockdown: Troops, including soldiers sent by Saudi Arabia, guard the entrance to Pearl Square today. A curfew has been in effect in Manama since Tuesday

 Burnt out: A hall inside the National Democratic Action Society building in Manama which has been torched twice during the unrest

 Security: At least five people have been killed in violent clashes between government troops and protesters since the uprising began a month ago

Obama welcomes Bahrain cabinet reshuffle

US President Barack Obama toasts before a dinner for the National Governor’s Association at the White House in Washington, February 27, 2011.

President Barack Obama welcomed yesterday a move by Bahrain’s government to reshuffle its cabinet and urged it to respect human rights.

“I welcome the announcement by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa about making important changes to the cabinet and restating his commitment to reform,” Obama said in a statement.

The king reshuffled the cabinet in a further attempt to appease the Shi’ite opposition that has staged days of protests against the Sunni-led government, government sources said.






The ministers of housing, health and cabinet affairs were among those sacked, said three government officials who did not wish to be named, adding they had not received official confirmation yet of who was being replaced.

Bahrain saw the worst unrest since the 1990s last week when seven people were killed in protests by its majority Shi’ites who have complained of discrimination by the government, which is a close ally of the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Thousands of protesters still occupy Pearl Square in central Manama, demanding the resignation of the cabinet and a new constitution under which the government is elected. — Reuters

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Violent protests continued to cloud several countries in the Middle East and North Africa on Friday, as nearly 30 bodies of protesters were found in Libya, three protesters were killed in Yemen and dozens wounded in Bahrain.

Bahrain king offers talks to resolve crisis

A family member of a protester, who was killed by riot-police, grieves during a funeral procession in Manama, February 18, 2011

Bahrain’s king has offered a national dialogue “with all parties” in an effort to resolve a crisis that has killed four people and wounded hundreds, rocking the island, a key regional ally of the United States.

More than 60 people were in hospital today undergoing treatment for wounds sustained when Bahraini security forces fired on protesters as they headed to Pearl Square yesterday.

The shootings occurred on a day of mass mourning when Shi’ites buried the four people killed a day earlier in the police raid on the Pearl Square traffic circle.



In response to protests against his government that have drawn thousands of people on to the streets, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa announced late yesterday the crown price had been granted “all the powers to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of all gracious citizens from all sections” in the national dialogue.

US President Barack Obama spoke with the king yesterday evening, condemning the violence and urging the government to show restraint. Obama said the stability of Bahrain, home to the US Middle East fleet, depended upon respect for the rights of its people, according to the White House.

The unrest has presented the United States with a now familiar dilemma in the region. It is torn between its desire for stability in a long-standing Arab ally and a need to uphold its own principles about the right of people to demonstrate for democratic change.

The crown prince of the non-OPEC minor oil producer, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, appealed for calm on TV.

“Today is the time to sit down and hold a dialogue, not to fight,” he said.

The unrest in the regional banking hub has shaken foreign confidence in the economy.

In 1999, King Hamad enacted a constitution allowing elections for a parliament with some powers, but royals still dominate a cabinet led by the king’s uncle — premier for 40 years.

Bahrain’s Shi’ite Muslims account for about 70 per cent of the population which is governed by the Sunni Al Khalifa dynasty. Shi’ites feel cut out of decision-making, as well as from jobs in the army and security forces.

Both the United States and Saudi Arabia see Bahrain as a bulwark against Shi’ite Iran. Saudi Arabia especially fears unrest spreading to its own Shi’ite community, a minority concentrated in the eastern oil-producing area of the world’s biggest crude exporter.

Ali Ibrahim, deputy chief of medical staff at Salmaniya hospital, said 66 wounded had been admitted from the clash and that four were in a critical condition.

About 1,000 people gathered outside one hospital, some spilling into the corridors as casualties were brought in, including one with a bloody sheet over his head. Some men wept.

Fakhri Abdullah Rashed said he had seen soldiers shooting at protesters in Pearl Square. “I saw people shot in several parts of their body. It was live bullets,” the protester added.

Jalal Firooz, an MP for Wefaq, the main Shi’ite bloc whose 17 members resigned from the 40-seat assembly on Thursday, said demonstrators had been holding a memorial for a protester killed earlier this week when riot police fired tear gas at them. Police had no comment.

The crowd then made for Pearl Square, where army troops opened fire, Firooz said.

Four people were killed and 231 wounded when riot police raided the protest camp in the early hours of Thursday.

Soldiers in tanks and armoured vehicles later took control of the square, which the mainly Shi’ite protesters had hoped to use as a base like Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the heart of protests that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on February 11.

Several thousand mourners turned out yesterday to bury those killed in what Bahrain’s top Shi’ite cleric called a “massacre” ordered by the island’s Sunni ruling family to crush protests.

Obama speaks to Bahrain king, urges restraint

Obama said Bahrain’s stability depended on respect for its people’s rights. Thousands of protesters gather at Pearl Roundabout in the heart of Manama, February 15, 2011.

US President Barack Obama spoke with Bahrain’s king last night, urging restraint after the kingdom’s security forces ignored Washington’s earlier call for calm and opened fire on protesters demanding reforms.

Amid unrest across much of the Middle East, US officials have voiced concern about violence in the island nation in talks with the government of Bahrain, which hosts a big US military base and borders Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter.

The White House said in a statement that Obama, in speaking with King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, condemned violence and said Bahrain’s stability depended on respect for the rights of its people

Earlier yesterday, Obama said he was deeply concerned by reports of violence in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen. “The United States condemns the use of violence by governments against peaceful protesters in those countries, and wherever else it may occur,” Obama said in a statement.



Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said he had asked the State Department to probe whether Bahrain had broken a US law he wrote that prohibits aid to foreign security forces that violate human rights. The United States provided around $20 million in military aid to Bahrain in 2010.

Bahraini security forces shot at protesters in the capital, Manama, yesterday, wounding at least 60 people, a day after police swept away a protest camp in the city, killing four people and wounding more than 230.

In Libya, soldiers sought to crush unrest. In Yemen, at least four protesters were killed in clashes between security forces and government loyalists and crowds demanding an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule.

Bahrain’s crackdown on protesters posed a new dilemma for the Obama administration after a popular uprising in Egypt ousted US ally President Hosni Mubarak a week ago.



A US national security official said Bahrain security forces appeared to be using rubber bullets and live ammunition fired from, but not limited to, shotguns.

“This (violence) is exactly what the administration and the US want to avoid,” said Robert Danin, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

“In the case of Egypt, the goal was to see managed change, (an) orderly transition. But the number-one thing was to ensure that this be done without violence. The minute that there’s violence it is very hard to reconcile support for your ally and the aspirations of the demonstrators.”

US national security and intelligence agencies expect Bahrain’s government to ride out the unrest and that security forces will eventually succeed in containing the protests, a senior US official familiar with government reporting and analysis on Bahrain told Reuters.

The United States views Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, as a strategic ally that straddles oil supply lines in the Gulf. As in the case of Egypt and elsewhere in the region, it must balance strategic interests with its support for protesters’ demands for economic and political reforms.

Obama’s response may be coloured by the US view of Bahrain as one of the more progressive Arab states. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Bahrain civil society activists during a visit in December their government was moving more quickly than many others in the region to implement democratic change.

Several 2009 cables from the US Embassy in Manama, made available to Reuters, characterized King Hamad as an enlightened and deeply pro-American ruler who, since assuming the throne in 1999, had fostered reconciliation with the Shi’ite Muslim majority and had undertaken serious political and economic reforms.

“The US is in a rather embarrassing position, because officials have tended to give King Hamad far more credit than they should have for political reforms,” said Michele Dunne, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The State Department issued a travel warning yesterday for Bahrain, noting clashes between protesters and demonstrators. “Spontaneous demonstrations and violence are expected throughout the next several days,” the department said, urging US citizens to defer nonessential travel to the country.

Middle East experts said the Obama administration had little leverage over Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim monarchy.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the top US military officer, may be reprising the role he played in the Egypt uprising by keeping channels open to the Bahraini military, they said.

“The options to bring pressure seem extremely limited. Despite the close alliance, Bahrain has been defiant of the United States over the years,” said Simon Henderson, a Gulf expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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Two dead as Bahrain police break up protest camp

A Bahrain protester injured during clashes with police is rushed to an operation theatre in Manama today, February 17, 2011.

Bahraini police stormed a protest camp in a central Manama square early today, killing at least two people, and armoured vehicles rumbled through the capital as the government tried to quell three days of protest.

“Police are coming, they are shooting teargas at us,” one demonstrator told Reuters by telephone as police tried to disperse demonstrators. Another said: “I am wounded, I am bleeding. They are killing us.”

Later, more than 50 armoured vehicles rolled down a highway towards Pearl Square, a road junction that demonstrators sought to turn into the base of a long-running protest such as that at Cairo’s Tahrir Square that led to the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.



Including last night’s deaths overnight, at least four have died since protests flared this week.

Thousands of overwhelmingly Shi’ite protesters, emboldened by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, took to Bahrain’s streets this week demanding more say in the Gulf Arab kingdom, where a Sunni Muslim family rules over a majority Shi’ite population.

“This is real terrorism,” said Abdul Jalil Khalil, a parliamentarian from the main Shi’ite opposition Wefaq bloc. “Whoever took the decision to attack the protest was aiming to kill.”

From a distance, the square appeared nearly empty of protesters early today after police moved in. Abandoned tents, blankets and rubbish dotted the area, and the smell of teargas wafted through the air.

One protester said he had driven away two people who had been wounded by rubber bullets.

A teenager shepherded a sobbing woman into a car, saying she had been separated from her two-year-old daughter in the chaos. At a main hospital, about 200 people gathered to mourn and protest.

“I was there . . . The men were running away, but the women and kids could not run as easily, some are still inside (the square),” said Ibrahim Mattar, a parliamentarian from Wefaq, which has walked out of parliament and was due to meet today to decide a response.

“It is confirmed two have died,” he said. “More are in critical condition.”

Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said on Twitter that security forces had “cleared Pearl roundabout” of demonstrators, and that a section of a main road was temporarily blocked.

Yesterday the party demanded a new constitution that would move the country towards democracy.

“We’re not looking for a religious state,” the group’s general secretary Sheikh Ali Salman told a news conference. “We’re looking for a civilian democracy . . . in which people are the source of power, and to do that we need a new constitution.”

Unwritten pact

The religious divide that separates Bahrain’s ruling family from most of its subjects has led to sporadic unrest since the 1990s, and Bahrain’s stability is being closely watched as protest movements blow through North Africa and the Middle East.

It is considered the state most vulnerable to popular unrest in a Gulf Arab region where, in an unwritten pact, rulers have traded a share of their oil wealth for political submission.

Regional power Saudi Arabia, and the United States — which bases its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain — both view the ruling Khalifa family as a bulwark against Shi’ite Iran.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa introduced a new constitution giving Bahrainis more political rights a decade ago, but the opposition says he has not gone far enough to introduce democracy. Most of the cabinet are still members of his family.

Protesters have called for him to fire his uncle, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, who has been prime minister since the modern state was founded in 1971. Wefaq members say they want elections for prime minister.

Protesters’ wrath had already been stirred up by the deaths of two of their number during this week’s demonstrations, the second killed in clashes at the funeral of the first.

“The people demand the fall of the regime!” protesters chanted outside the hospital.

Protesters who yesterday had expressed confidence they were secure in the square, said they had no idea their encampment would be broken up. Opposition parliamentarian Sayed Hadi said dozens were wounded.

“There was no single warning,” one demonstrator, who declined to be named, said. “It was like attacking an enemy. People were sleeping peacefully.”

King Hamad has expressed condolences to relatives of the two dead men killed on Monday and Tuesday and said a committee would investigate. His government says it has detained people suspected of blame for the deaths.