During the holy month of Ramadan, life usually  slows down in the Middle East. The main focus is on observing the month of fasting and fulfilling religious obligations.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the scene across the Middle East has changed dramatically. Ramadan is no longer a month where wars, protests and feuds disappear; instead, it has become a month where people have used its significance to get their message across to regimes ruling body. On August 3, the Pakistani public took to streets to protest against killings in Myanamar.

Since the commemoration of Ramadan on July 19, over 25 demonstrations against the 200 year old ruling dynasty of Alkhalifah have taken place in Bahrain. These demonstrations come amidst the official warnings that any protests and public rallies will be considered illegal. On July 31, 2012, frustrated protestors took to streets in Bahrain and in the neighboring country of Saudi Arabia.

On Monday, clashes broke out between security forces and protestors in the village of Sitra. According to Agence France Presse, “wounded demonstrators are afraid to go to hospital for treatment because they are afraid that they will be arrested.” On Thursday, August 2, the security forces clashed with protestors in the village of Dair and Bani Jamarah.

Since last year, the human rights situation has further deteriorated in Bahrain. Last year, Saudi Arabia deployed more than 1,000 troops to Bahrain to help Alkhalifah government to quell anti-government uprisings in country’s capital city of Manama. Subsequently, there were over 50 fatalities, more were injured and many were incarcerated for their participation.

It was later revealed in a special report in November 2011 that security forces used torture and excessive force against those that were arrested during the assiduous crackdown on public demonstrations. The Bahrainis held the ruling King Hamad bin Isa Khalifa liable for scenes of carnage on streets, civil unrest and mass arrests.

Aljazzera International stated that ‘Forty people, including the daughter of a leading opposition activist, have been arrested hours after security forces used tear gas and birdshot to disperse hundreds of protesters demanding political reforms in Bahrain.’ Press Tv further reported that Bahraini authorities arrested opposition party al-Wefaq’s female member, Ahlam al-Khuzai, at the airport on Friday as she was travelling to Tunisia to attend a conference organized by Amnesty International.

One of the focal point of mass protests is calling an end to discriminatory measures used by the ruling monarchy towards the country’s 70 percent of marginalized Shiite population. Following the popular Arab Spring revolt across the Gulf region, Bahrainis too took to streets in mid-February 2011, demanding a transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and to new socio economical and political reforms.

However, like any other Arab country, the problems of Bahrain could be traced back to 1975, when Sheikh Isa dissolved the national assembly, thus marking an end to country’s short lived constitutionalism and rendering democratic reforms. In the 1990s, a popular uprising and a demand to restore the 1973 constitution threatened the ruling seat of Alkhalifa family.

In 1992, the United Nations Human Rights Council placed Bahrain on a list of monitoring for its use of torture and force against opposition members. In 1999, Sheikh Hamad ascended the Alkhalifa throne and introduced new reforms to avoid repeat of 1990s mass political unrests by making promises to take country towards new reforms, democracy and constitutionalism.

On the surface Bahrain appears to be a model country in the Arab world and is signatory to eight human rights treaties from the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1990) to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (2006) to the Arab Charter on Human Rights (2008). In contrast, the country has failed to abide by most of these treaties. In December 2011, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton lauded Bahrain on being a ‘model partner’ for not only the United States but also for other countries.

According to Amnesty International “The Bahraini government’s response to the findings of an international commission of inquiry has proved inadequate as human rights violations continue.” However, the failure of the ruling body to live up to its promises has resulted in mass uprising, liberalized autocracy and suppression of human rights activists and opposition figures.

The West has come under much scrutiny in the media and with human rights organizations for maintaining its silence over Bahrain’s violation of human rights, its restriction on freedom of expression and right to assembly. Patrick Cockburn said in The Independent: “While Barack Obama and David Cameron vigorously oppose the atrocities against protesters in Syria, they handle Bahrain with kid gloves.”

The scene on the streets of Bahrain does not show any signs of dwindling down. A lesson should be learned from the ousting of governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Taking to the streets in the sweltering heat of July and August without food or drink indicates that Bahraini people have not given up their struggle for justice.

Image Courtesy of  malyousif

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“Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to dear, kind God! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones!”

The Brothers Karamazov

Waking up to a brand new day, to this flawed yet protected world of mine, I check the street I live in. Every single house is standing still, since there are no bombs falling through sky. People are outside, rushing somewhere, getting lost in daily life. Nobody puts a gun against someones head, against my head; my head is still at its right place, still hasn’t abandoned me yet. The “bell jar” that surrounds me is still there, being this transparent border between me and the rest of the world. Being completely safe and sound, I am all set, to get myself into trouble. I still hold the freedom of being open to this world where I reside, with all my possibilites, while somewhere, somebody is living in an extreme vulnerability, in complete chaos, where serenity doesn’t drop by. I encounter the Other’s trouble through a screen everyday, since this is what I intent, what i ask for: to get myself into trouble.

AJEnglish tweets on June 1st at 8.04 a.m: “Tortured and killed: Hamza al-Khateeb, age 13 – death in custody sparks further furious protests in Syria”. I follow the tweet till the end, and read the coverage. Hamza dissapears during a protest in Syria on 29th of April, and been held under Syrian custody until 24th of May, until returned dead to his family as just a body, that holds the marks of a horrible torture, reports Al Jazeera: “Hamza’s eyes were swollen and black and there were identical bullet wounds where he had apparently been shot through both arms, the bullets tearing a hole in his sides and lodging in his belly. On Hamza’s chest was a deep, dark burn mark. His neck was broken and his penis cut off.”

The famous nausea seizures me, real slow, making sure that I cannot get away with it. I have to go till the end, I shall take the burden on my own shoulders, so I dare to watch the censured video of the marks of the torture of Hamza’s violated body. Trying to collect the ghosts of this 13 year old’s existence, I curse to this nonsense, how on earth is it possible for the rest of us to move on?

Not being able “to die his own death”, his possibilities were taken away from him in hideousness. Hamza’s story drags me to Rilke, in whom I seek  shelter, yet not comfort:

“God everything is presented ready-made. One comes along, one finds a life all prepared, one only has to put it on. One wants to leave or is forced to; no strain:

Voilà votre mort, monseiur (Here is your death, sir)”

Hamza became the symbol of the Syrian uprising:

https://www.facebook.com/hamza.alshaheed?sk=wall

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While the liberation of people in the internationally defined ‘Arab world’ receive daily exposure on screens and in newspapers around the globe at the moment, people south of the Sahara are desperately trying to raise their voice: What about the rest of Africa?

AlJazeera.net ran a story about the missing attention towards Africa in international media in late February – roughly two months after Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain had captured the world with their people’s unrelenting protest against dictatorship. The coverage of the scores of Egyptians who took over Tahrir Square in peaceful but defiant objection to the regime, provoked widespread sympathy across the global audience. To see a non-violent revolution turn the nation full circle became a source of great admiration in the rest of the world.

All of a sudden, #Egypt was a ‘sexy topic’ but despite the banks of the Nile stemming from central Africa, the world viewed the Egyptian uprising solely as a Middle Eastern issue, directing their attention towards the greater region southwards and what the revolution would mean for the rest of the Arab world and Israel. Few seemed to notice that the rest of the continent which Egypt resides on, a continent with a billion people, are living under equally despotic regimes and suffers the same sociopolitical suppression as their neighbors of the north.

“Egypt is in Africa. We should not fool about with the attempts of the North to segregate the countries of North Africa from the rest of the continent,” says Firoze Manji, the editor of Pambazuka Online, an advocacy website for social justice in Africa to AlJazeera. “Their histories have been intertwined for millennia. Some Egyptians may not feel they are Africans, but that is neither here nor there. They are part of the heritage of the continent.”

The ‘spark’ was ignited, literally, when Mohamed Bouzazi’s self-immolation in Tunisia (an African country) articulated the frustrations of a nation and the fire spread to Algeria (also African), Yemen and Bahrain while Hosni Mubarak sat unwittingly of the revolution about to come.

But did you know that in ‘darkest Africa’, far away from the cameras and reporters, another dramatic protest unfolded in Gabon on January 29 where opposition protested against Ali Bhongo Odhumba’s government, whom they accuse of hijacking recent elections. With little geopolitical importance, news organizations seemed largely oblivious to the underdeveloped oil exporter whose people have lived four decades under the Bhongo family’s regime. Elsewhere on the continent protests broke out, inspired by the populist movements of the North, but the coverage was in many places either directly stifled (newspaper staff being arrested by local authorities) or indirectly ignored by international news.

AlJazeera reported that Egypt and Tunisia may have been the catalysts for revolt across the Arab world, but will the fire spread to the rest of Africa and if so, will the international audience even notice?

“What the continent lacks is media coverage,” says Drew Hinshaw, an American journalist based in West Africa. “There’s no powerhouse media for the region like AlJazeera, while European and American media routinely reduce a conflict like [that in] Ivory Coast or Eastern Congo to a one-sentence news blurb at the bottom of the screen.” Nanjala, a political analyst at the University of Oxford suggests that the media’s shortcomings stem from a tendency to favor explanations that fit the ‘failing Africa’ narrative.

The American journalist is equally disappointed in world leaders. “ Barack Obama publicly condemned the use of violence in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. When was the last time you saw Obama come out and make a statement on Ivory Coast? Or Eastern Congo? Or Djibouti, where 20,000 people protested [...] according to the opposition?”.

The tendency in global media to distinguish between the outdated ‘third world’ Africa-issues and the ‘media friendly’ revolution in the northern part is a valid concern among several nations, especially of Central Africa, who find their struggle trivialized in comparison with the Western world’s obsession with the Middle East. Has the line between the familiar suffering of ‘the African’ and the fascinating suffering of the Egyptian or Tunisian really been drawn by cameras and reporters? Another question is if the African continent will ever receive high priority in the global media stream. If a highly exposed revolution on its very soil failed to put Africa on the international agenda – what will?

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