The oppressed prisoners of conscience achieved a crushing victory over tyranny and oppression, and the Khalifas felt politically and morally defeated, so they were forced to release most of the Bahraini prisoners who had spent a long part of their lives in torture chambers without mercy or humanity. They came out, each one of them carrying with him memories ranging from feelings of pride, dignity and victory, to memories of suffering and abuse and the endless cursing and insults inflicted on them and their beliefs by the tyrant’s henchmen. The dictator and his gang felt their political and moral isolation from the homeland and the people, so they drank the cup of poison and opened the prison doors for the heroes of the homeland to come out crowned with victory. Blessed are these free people and our congratulations to their families whose patience was beyond the capacity of the steadfast mountains.
The tyrant has deliberately continued to imprison the free, especially their great symbols. Soon, the imprisoned symbols of the people will complete fourteen years behind bars, and they are still steadfast in their covenant with the people. The jailer continues to threaten the security of the country and its people, sometimes through arrests that recently included children, other times by bypassing Bahrainis in the field of employment and opening the door wide to foreign labor, and thirdly by torturing and persecuting scholars and trying to alienate the masses from them. The country is still living in an atmosphere of terror from a regime that seeks to eliminate the identity of the country and its people by any means, and extends its bridges with the enemies of the nation, and tries to impose a new reality of normalization on the country. Thus, the situation has reached an unprecedented state of political and ideological polarization. The Arab peoples as a whole have always rejected the occupation and supported Palestine and its people, and suddenly the phenomenon of normalization emerged in a disgusting manner, and Westerners and some Arab rulers began to impose it on the region as a reality. These attempts coincided with the persecution of the Palestinian people that crossed the borders, represented by killing and expelling the people of Gaza from their areas and their homes. Here the phenomenon of refugees emerged again, especially on the borders between Gaza and Egypt. The Bahrainis stood against these facts, as did all Arab peoples.
The symbols of the homeland and the people languishing in the Khalifa prisons have felt for years the danger of the Bahraini situation pushing towards normalization, as well as the miserable conditions of the Palestinian people. They issued statements supporting Palestine and its people, supporting their right to self-determination, and expressing their indignation at the normalization of relations between the Khalifa family and the enemy. Fourteen years of imprisonment and persecution did not change the convictions of these heroes who refused to give up the demands of the people. Given the internal and external pressures on the tyrant and his call to release political prisoners after this long period, he began to look for ways to submit to these demands while saving face. His talk about “open prisons” and “alternative punishments” are only titles for these attempts. Since many prisoners and their families refused this and insisted on leaving prison completely and without any preconditions or titles, the tyrant found himself in an embarrassing situation and began to look for other titles to reduce the number of hostages in his prisons. The pressure came from citizens who took to the streets in many demonstrations demanding the release of prisoners, and from international human rights organizations that called for the complete emptying of prisons, stressing that their inmates are “prisoners of conscience” and not criminals. This pressure also came from a number of governments that support the Khalifas, after they realized the extent of the immorality of the dispute in the Khalifa dictionary. After nearly fourteen years, it was expected that the tyrant would lick his pride and look for something to save face.
The problem with the Khalifa regime this time is that its persistence in oppression has deepened its crisis and has not helped it overcome the repercussions of the February 14 Revolution. Thus, it has planted the seeds for another revolution that will not be long in coming. There is nothing left that connects it to the original Bahrainis (Shiites and Sunnis). It has committed no crime against the people, including oppression, imprisonment, torture, killing, execution, and deportation. So what remains of the bonds of the relationship between the two parties? What drives the original Bahraini to submit to the Khalifa regime, which it knows will continue its oppression and torture on the one hand and its continuous efforts to change the country, its identity, and its people on the other hand? In recent years, Sunni citizens have felt the danger of political naturalization practiced by the tyrant, and that they have become forced to pay its social, economic, and cultural bills. Peoples do not respond to demographic engineering policies, and do not accept changing their social and cultural ties by any means. Suppression, persecution, and all methods of weakening and blackmail are all methods that were used in the past and did not succeed in breaking the back of the people, and there are no circumstances that make them more capable of achieving success today. There is another dimension to the crisis, which is that the experience of the last fourteen years has given the people immunity against methods of deception and confusion, and there is no longer any fear that they will retreat from their religious, intellectual, and political affiliations. The blood of their youth has shaped their lifestyles and convictions, and they have become more determined to change. The people have immunity against methods of deception and confusion, and will not respond to the regime’s attempts in these aspects.
So there are three broad headings that together represent the impossibility of closing the file of the revolution, uprising, and political movement that has continued since 1922. These headings will not be able to be suppressed or bypassed by the Khalifa regime, and they are as follows:
First: The people have become more confident in themselves, more determined to demand their demands, and less afraid of the Khalifa regime’s ability to crush them. This means that the reasons that combined to spark the February 14 Revolution and the 1990s uprising before it still exist, especially with the tyrant’s failure to carry out any significant political reform, because he believes that this will make him appear weak in front of the people and the world. This is a mistaken way of thinking that is not in line with the culture that aims to build a modern state that depends on its people to protect it. This confidence in self-power will always be present among the people, and will explode in anger when the circumstances are right.
Second: The Khalifa regime has only succeeded in one thing: deepening the feeling of hostility towards it among the people. The file of persecution practiced by the Khalifas against the people, especially in the last fourteen years, is full of damning facts that confirm the impossibility of coexistence between the two parties. Thus, change has become engraved in the people’s memory and written in the history of the country with the blood of martyrs. This hostility reveals the regime’s policies towards the religious feelings of citizens. What happened during the last Ashura season, from preemptive arrests before the start of the season, to preventing the entry of preachers from abroad or mourners from other Gulf countries, or preventing Bahraini preachers and eulogists from traveling to other countries to participate in the revival of the season, all of this deepened not only feelings of anger, but also the feeling of absolute alienation between the two parties. The tyrant achieved, through his methods of oppression, the opposite of what he hoped for, which was to frighten or subjugate the people. Today, there is no longer a single honorable Bahraini who would accept the continuation of the Khalifa regime, which has committed the most heinous crimes against the country and the people. So what did the tyrant and his gang gain?
Third: The Khalifa regime has lost credibility in front of the international parties with which it deals and seeks to buy their positions with money. In the eyes of these parties, the Khalifas are opportunists without limits and mislead in every sense, which are matters that do not align with the logic aimed at establishing a modern system of government. As for international organizations, they have realized the extent of the Khalifa’s oppression since the first days of the revolution when the tyrant prevented international human rights organizations from visiting the country to see what was happening there. Therefore, the recent recommendations of the UN experts were a painful slap in the face to the dictator who pretends to be strong and not to need those angry human rights and political parties. Thus, the task of opposing the Khalifas has become less difficult and easier. International human rights and media organizations realize the extent of the oppression practiced by the regime against its citizens. The recent releases came to confirm the isolation of the tyrant and his gang and the victory of the people.
Losing credibility in this sense paves the way for advocates of change to continue the struggle in the hope that this world will regain some of its power that will help it force the Khalifas to do many things: first, release all political prisoners in detail, second, force it to carry out meaningful political reforms to meet some popular demands, and it is expected that the tyrant will seek to circumvent this or try to present it as an expression of the Khalifas’ desire for reform. Third, prepare the ground for prosecuting some symbols of the regime, especially those who committed crimes against humanity against political detainees. These are facts that the Khalifas will not be able to ignore, and the coming era will reveal the evidence of that.
O God, have mercy on our righteous martyrs, and grant them a position of truth with You, and release our prisoners, O Lord of the worlds.
Bahrain Islamic Freedom Movement
September 6, 2024
2024-09-06 16:44:33