Chan'ad Bahraini

The fourth installment in the series of protests by the National Committee for Martyrs and Victims of Torture was held today outside the Ministry of Interior. If you're wondering what happened to the third protest, it actually took place last Friday, but I wasn't on the island to cover it. You can see some photos at montadayat.org.

As you can tell there isn't really anything new in these protests compared with previous ones in the series, and the numbers attending aren't huge by any means (250 tops). So one can't really fault the international media for not giving attention to each protest... and we would be foolish to think that the local press might give the protests due coverage. Even for me, there isn't much I could say that I haven't said already, and I'm only blogging this protest because I think the cause is very important.

I think that these demonstrations serve a purpose as a means for the participants to peacefully vent their emotions, but I think the Committee could be doing more to achieve their stated goals. I wrote about this last time so I won't go through it again. And I'll also recommend that you read this post about the strategy for change proposed by Prof Asef Bayat.

Anyways above is a "Spy vs Spy" photo from today, similar to this one that I took at a previous protest. I find it quite disconcerting that the police/CID was videotaping us at the demonstration, but judging from the black balaclava that the policeman is wearing over his face it's obvious that he isn't too comfortable with it either!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 03, 2005 at 2/03/2005 11:22:00 pm. Permalink