Bahraini army murders peaceful demonstrators

This gut-wrenching video (after the jump) shows peaceful protestors being fired on with automatic weapons by Bahrain's military. The comment thread on the YouTube video attains a new peak in awfulness, even for YouTube videos, with rage-filled illiterates variously blaming Iranian provocateurs, Israel, the USA, Shiites, Sunnis, and whomever else is handy, interspersed with people convinced that gunshots don't really sound like that.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera's coverage continues to be the best thing going, followed closely by the Guardian.

Bahrain's army deliberately kills peaceful protesters with live rounds ( automatic weapon ) (Thanks, Superface, via Submitterator!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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kjulig

I have no idea if it is against Bahrain’s laws for the military to kill protesters. If it isn’t then strictly speaking, it isn’t murder.
</pedantry>

But seriously, the word “murder” is too often thrown around in contexts where it just isn’t appropriate that you have to pretty careful to use it right.
johnphantom

I like some of the comments under the youtube video, like:

Now this is how you take dare of terrorist. shoot the dead before they get toï»¿ close.
MrSTANDFORAMERICA

He can’t even put together a coherent sentence in his native language… but I will agree with shooting dead people before they get too close – go for the headshot, and double tap!
PaulR

Multiple replies:

JayConvers: Not so erudite… I used “reliable polls” twice in two adjacent sentences. And I should have made it clear that when I said We should be looking to much of what’s going on there to see what democracy should look like., the ‘there’ meant Tunisia, Egypt, et al.

Ugly Canuck: Where do I get this “bastion of democracy” crap? It’s a trademarked motto, no? Should I have said “Bullwark of Democracy?

Just google that phrase. Candidates: the Ukraine, the American Supreme Court, Israel, the US Congress, Facebook (?!), not Hugo Chavez, and pie.

No, really, pie: http://thegauntlet.ca/story/14241

Thorzda: Saudi Arabia could go either way. Some reports say that the oil reserves there are much lower that they let on. If the oil reserves aren’t worth defending, and the US would definitely arouse the wrath of the rest of the world, would it bother?

The American media spin, on the other hand, is almost a 28th Amendment stating: “The Corporate Media shall have power to dictate the terms of democracratic discourse using whatever means, without consideration of truth and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Or something like that.
Anonymous

As someone from the region, I’d like to say that this is much more complicated to what it seems. Or what the media would like you to think. The media in the Arab world is pretty much controlled by governments. For example, aljazeera news is very biased as it had bad relations to Bahrain and is supported by iran and Shiites.
The bottom line is that almost 80% of the population is shiite and the ruling family, like all the gulf states have are Sunni. Shiites have been trying to change the regime and have been violently terrorizing bahrain with bombings. Not suicidal bombings, but placing bombs in residential ares and malls.
Now, as a result, the shiites are oppressed because they want the change the regime and follow Iran, a shiite system.

http://www.peacebahrain.com/2011/02/media-lies/

A lot of it is fake. A lot of it is forces defending themselves against the protesters ass they have found knives swords guns and so on and are known to be violent.
Also in their azza, the mourning of the dead, they use fake blood when they walk the streets hitting on the chest, themselves and hitting their heads with swords.

Sorry for the long comment, had alot on my chest
Anonymous

Something is just funny about all these “revolutions” in the past days. I mean, it’s all quiet for decades.. then suddenly the bubble bursts, and it’s like a water fall. I don’t want to sound paranoid but it just gives me a feeling of deja-vu (see similar actions in eastern europe 20 years ago) and I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t just engineered. Put it this way: after the total failure in Irak and the imminent failure in Afghanistan, maybe the US has learned something. Let the people revolt, and as soon as the masses are in control, take advantage of their lack of experience and suggest/impose some very profitable deals. After all, how many of these people have any experience whatsoever in international negotiations? It’s way easier to deal with ignorants in these matters than to actually have to bargain with someone that knows how it works.
So you de-stabilize a few insignificant countries in the Middle East, which in turn might help de-stabilize larger countries like say Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. It’s cheaper than going to war and no one is going to blame you like with Irak. And if anyone finds out, you can pose as the savior of the freedom of the people. It’s not like it hasn’t been tried before in Irak. “Oh we only want to bring democracy to these people!” then go for the money (oil/re-build effort).
In the end, all these people are going to have from it is a bit of chaos, then they’ll think they ellected a new government, which in turn will sell itself and the country and end up just as greedy as the previous one. It’s just a shift of power from some wealthly people to some “less” wealthly ones.
I’m not saying people aren’t genuinely revolting, but it’s easy to “drive” them to do whatever you want, especially when they are a bit hungry and they flame up easily as it always is the case in the Middle East.
Does that makes any sense to any of you?
Wallenstein

Looks like the F1 grand-prix has been cancelled.

Not before time – but there was really no way it could go ahead in the current climate.
RedShirt77

I can’t wait to hear so many moronic talking heads on TV telling me how much the USA needs all these dictatorships and these people are being shot with american bullets because it protects the interests of the American people.

We need a simple policy, No military aid and no arms sales to non-democratic states… NONE!
TheCrawNotTheCraw

“The comment thread on the YouTube video attains a new peak in awfulness, even for YouTube videos, with rage-filled illiterates variously blaming Iranian provocateurs, Israel, the USA, Shiites, Sunnis, and whomever else is handy, interspersed with people convinced that gunshots don’t really sound like that.”

Makes me glad for the moderation we have here, and I’m not being sarcastic. Blogs where “anything goes” quickly go in the gutter, as the YouTube comments demonstrate.
Anonymous

For kjulig, in response to the understanding of what “murder” is, I thought that was clarified in 1945 during the Nuremberg trials. Murder is murder, regardless of what your boss says, what your commander says, what your president/fuhrer/dictator says, what a judge says, or what is written in your constitution, scriptures, or city ordinances.

Ultimately every person is responsible for their own actions. “I just work here”, “I was following orders”, or “the devil made me do it” are not valid excuses.

If you insist on a document for further clarification you can reference the Geneva Conventions, NÃ¼rnberg Charter, United Nations Conventions, etc.

We don’t have to wait for Bahrain to decide if it was murder or not. Anyone guilty of crimes against humanity can be tried at The International Criminal Court at The Hague.
- kjulig
  
  I fully agree with you. Killing living and thinking humans (if they don’t want to die) is what I personally would call murder.
  
  My problem is with double standards. If you call this murder, you have to accept that state-sponsored executions such as those in the US are murder too (“regardless [...] of what a judge says,” your words) as are war casualties. Where do you draw the line? You can’t have it both ways.
  
  Why not be a tiny little bit objective, accept that murder is a defined legal term and that the dictionary definition of “murder” is the “crime of unlawfully killing a person” (Merriam-Webster). Just go with “deliberately shoot” (the submitted headline — which was clear enough IMO — before Cory chose to sensationalize it). You could use “gun down,” “assassinate” or “butcher” if you need something more dramatic.
  - travtastic
    
    Are you finished yet? This would be defined as murder by virtually every person on Earth.
    
    Believe it or not friend, the rest of the internet also has access to online dictionaries. We don’t need your trite, pedantic vocabulary lessons immediately after watching an innocent man get shot in the head.
Knurm

Did it strike anyone else as bizarre that after several seconds of sustained automatic weapons fire in a group that large, only one man is killed, and the other two men being wounded (I can only hope that they were able to find help and be treated somewhere)? That the group entirely disappeared off-camera also seemed weird.

I don’t know why this is all I can think of saying after watching that video – maybe it’s just my way of coping with the absurdity of the situation, or maybe it’s the product of a childhood spent living in a death-saturated media landscape (I was ten when 9/11 happened, eleven for shock-and-awe).
- Baldhead
  
  It’s not bizarre- they ran. they dispersed, as is the common sense thing to do when folks start shooting at you.
- phisrow
  
  I suspect that the troops began with some noisy-but-deliberately-ineffective firing above the protesters and then one or more of them decided to start shooting in earnest… At that point, much of the crowd ran for it.
- CatherineCC
  
  Not really. If you’re ordered to fire by someone who has orders to fire on civilians (and most likely you, should you resist), you’re probably going to fire. But nobody has to know if your rounds are sailing 30 feet over the protester’s heads.
  Of course, the bullets come down somewhere.
Anonymous

For Redshirt77, you say “No military aid and no arms sales to non-democratic states… ”

While most Americans would probably agree in principle, as a practical matter we depend on military exports just to prop up our economy. We did not become a world power until World War II lead to an unquenchable demand from nations at war for convoy-loads of tanks, guns, planes, and munitions. Even as we entered the war late in 1942, none of our manufacturing capability was affected by enemy bombings or invasions.

As a result we became the de-facto supplier of arms to the “free world” (read “non-communist”) ever since, especially after we inherited Japanese and German military technology that took us to the moon and back. Our automotive industry is no longer able to compete in the global market and can barely hold its own within our borders. All other manufacturing has been outsourced to China. Our “service economy” model collapsed in the mid 2000′s with outsourcing of call centers and software developmenet to India. You seriously don’t expect Steve Jobs to “innovate” our way out of recession forever do you? We depend on paranoid and despotic 2nd and 3rd world dictators to keep our last remaining factories and engineers working. Free societies with little need for full-time anti-riot brigades are going to be bad for business.
- RedShirt77
  
  I think if american companies couldn’t put their factories is the countries ruled by juntas there would probably be more work here in the states.
EH

Uh, of course they murdered the protestors, that’s what entrenched powers do when threatened. Egypt took everybody by surprise, and now the dictators are prepared. It’s not like the Western orthodoxy thinks of Arabs as anything other than dogs who deserve their Korans to be pissed on, so it comes as no surprise that the violence continues unabated while the Bahrainian and Libyan leaders are asked nicely to be nicer.
Sapa

It was murder because the people were unarmed and not rioting, they had taken their children and whole families including women and the elderly were present. They were attacked without provocation AND without warning to disperse.

Police and troops were brought in from outside the country and they had language barriers to understanding, medical staff were beaten as they attempted to attend wounded and their attempts to communicate failed.

Their protest is very different to other unrest across northern countries of Africa and the East because they were only asking for civil liberties and it was not an Islamic demonstration, there were no Islamic flags to be seen, it was secular. The people of Bahrain have only 6% unemployment but have no civil rights.

The government of the country have issued an apology and yesterdays news showed the police and troops being moved away as people followed and offered them flowers. The people have now been left to have their protest in peace at Pearl Roundabout and were given an apology for the killings.

However, an apology is not going to make anything better, the many who
died last week are still dead, families bereaved, civil freedoms unreformed.

A Grand Prix race was scheduled to be held in Bahrain, I hope that this is now cancelled. Anyone with decency should not ally themselves with people who will kill unarmed people without provocation.
heroic

Actually, if you kill someone intentionally, without consent, and other than in extreme self defence, that’s murder.

Executions are murder. When you order a soldier to kill someone, then you kill two people- because the soldier who comes back isn’t the person you sent to do your dirty work. A person who kills loses something of what it is to be human.

Is there a difference between a general sending a team of armed men to kill protesters, and a mafioso sending his guys to kill shopkeepers? I don’t think so. Not a qualitative one. Both are criminals, and both should be locked up somewhere so they can’t hurt any more innocent people.
MV

( forgive if a double post- I’m new at the comments here) I lived in Bahrain in the 1980′s. I went to school with several of the people in power, now. A few points of clarification:
Bahrain was once part of Iran. Much like any other former colony, there is a certain paranoia against the former occupying power, which, coupled with the dichotomy in the population (the rich ruling class is mostly Sunni, like Kuwait, where they came from, while the more poor more working class Shi’a are the majority) and events in recent history (Iranian funded protests, the Al Khalifas bringing in Sunnis from other countries to help govern, etc) means that the comments about it being Iranian are far more reasonable that it might appear on the face of it.
Also, keep in mind that the ruling family, the Al Khalifas are by-and-large far more western and far more moderate than most of the alternatives. That varies, of course, from individual to individual, but they’re far more open to the concept of western democracy that say, the house of Faud, or the Al Thanis. Salman, the crown Prince, was ( and probably secretly still is) even open to ending the boycott against Israel.
As for the American presence there- that’s a pretty old alliance, all things considered. The Administrative Support Unit was (wink wink nudge nudge) there to support the Bahrain School, and only later came to be a much more full-fledged base. Primarily, it was there to monitor, not to control. With the second gulf war that changed significantly- however, offers have been on the table to move it- to either Kuwait, or Dubai- so, Bahrain is not the only game in town, and they know it. Minus the American presence, chances are good Bahrain would get swallowed up by either Saudi or Iran, which would also signal the end of the Offshore banking industry there. So, what I’m saying is that the Bahrainis want America there more than America wants to be there.
Yes, I can hear both rubber bullets and live rounds in the audio there. I have no doubt that a combination of the two was used- and using live rounds on unarmed civilians is unacceptable in any context. I strongly suspect that if America is making any moves in the background on this, it’s not exactly to prop up the Al Khalifas against the protestors, but rather to find a way to help transition the place to a republic, with a figurehead. I can’t say that I know everyone up and down the chain, here, but from those that I do know, that would make more sense.
Moderate this comment as you will- I just wanted to add a little context. I’m not trying to debate anyone, so if someone disagrees, that’s fine by me. However, what’s going on in the middle east is much more complex than the going meta-narrative of “Protestors= people power/ governments= Juntas”
mdh

If you call this murder, you have to accept that state-sponsored executions such as those in the US are murder too … as are war casualties.

No, no, I really don’t have to accept that, primarily because it’s a logical fallacy.
- travtastic
  
  I’m going to have to choose all three!
Niklas

There is no chaser for watching this. There should be none.

Looking for more information on Bahrain military I found this, it is especially damning today:

With the help of the U.S. and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Bahrain has made significant efforts to upgrade its defense systems and modernize its armed forces over the last 20 years. In 1982, the GCC gave Bahrain $1.7 billion for this purpose. Since the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. has provided military and defense technical assistance and training to Bahrain from Foreign Military Sales (FMS), commercial sources, excess defense article sales (EDA) and under the International Military and Education Training (IMET) program. The U.S. Office of Military Cooperation in Bahrain is attached to the U.S. Embassy and manages the security assistance mission. U.S. military sales to Bahrain since 2000 total $1.4 billion. Principal U.S. military systems acquired by the BDF include eight Apache helicopters, 54 M60A3 tanks, 22 F-16C/D aircraft, 51 Cobra helicopters, 9 MLRS Launchers (with ATACMS), 20 M109A5 Howitzers, 1 Avenger AD system, and the TPS-59 radar system. Bahrain has received $195 million in FMF and $410 million in U.S. EDA acquisition value delivered since the U.S.-Bahraini program began in 1993. The Bahrain Defense Force also placed orders for 9 UH-60M Blackhawk helicopters and 2 Mk-V Fast Patrol Boats. Delivery of both systems was planned for 2009.

Military exercises are conducted on a regular basis to increase the BDF’s readiness and improve coordination with the U.S. and other GCC forces. The BDF also sends personnel to the United States for military training. This training includes courses from graduate level professional military education down to entry level technical training.

Source: U.S. Department of State
- Rayonic
  
  Sounds like diplomacy to me.
  
  Look at the Wikipedia page for the Gulf Cooperation Council and tell me if that sounds negative at all. U.S. support of it was probably hailed as a step forward for Middle East peace.
  
  Positive diplomatic agreements with autocratic regimes have (in general) been promoted for decades as a way of avoiding war. Peace at any cost. So it seems kinda silly how we act shocked anytime a popular uprising happens and it turns out we gave money/aid/arms to the old government.
  
  Playing devil’s advocate for a second, Egypt might have pursued (more) war with Israel had the U.S. not cut a deal with them and supported the Mubarak regime. Did that save lives? Clearly some people thought it did.
  - rebdav
    
    The Camp David accords showed that at least one Arab government could allow the existence of a non-Muslim state in the middle east. It established the concept of Israel trading land for national recognition and a promise of non-aggression. It would take 20 years for the other Arab state, Jordan to also accept Israels existence. The cold peace has been cold and unfriendly, but peace is better than constant air battles and border skirmishes.
    If the concept of trading land for peace is depreciated because it is embarrassing to Egyptians to recognize a state of peace with Israel or a demilitarized Sinai how is any other peace accord to go down with other parties like the puppet PLO or freely elected Hamas?
    People in the region need to understand peace is better than sticking it to al yahood.
    They had also better spread the idea that they want freedom, not a new slave master same as the old one. I don’t know that Egypt or Tunesia has become freer because of the uprising, just empowered the army so far.
  - Niklas
    
    Good point.
    
    I will not try to look like I know even a third of what is going on, but it looks to me like USA has been keen on keeping a status quo via military aid to the middle east “allies” while doing sanctions or humanitarian aid elsewhere.
  - Mister44
    
    No. NO. NO. Don’t you get it? AMERICA BAD!!! AAARRGGHH!!!!!
    
    Someone mentioned the Saudis. If Iran or someone were to invade, we would get involved. If it was civil unrest and protest we will not.
- Anonymous
  
  Divide those sales figures by the number of protesters murdered and then you will know the value of a human life.
Anonymous

Part of me wonders what sort of analysis Google is doing on Youtube comments. They are a company that makes their money out of understanding all that data …
Anonymous

If Formula 1 Bahrein is not canceled immediately, there should be a global boycott of Formula 1 and their major sponsors
- Major Variola (ret)
  
  You’re f’in joking. There will be ZERO tourism into BR
  until things are better. Arab-NASCAR or no.
  
  In fact, ME tourism is going to be way down… heh…
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Not true…some are booking now for Egypt as a way of showing support for the demonstrators.
    
    Perhaps it would be more prudent to wait and see what happens, rather than making un-evidenced and uselessly negative predictions as to the state of the future.
PaulR

I was thinking about the general situation this morning, as I was listening to the news of yet another North African country’s popular uprising. Can I advance a still-gestating notion?

In part, in _small_ part, some of this is possible because the ‘Last Bastion of Democracy and Freedom’ ™ is slipping into impotence.

Seven ravens, whose wings are clipped, are permanent residents of the Tower of London. Superstition has it that if ravens aren’t there, the White Tower will crumble. Likewise, the American ruling class has advanced the superstition that if they are taxed, humanity’s last hope, the LBoDaF, will crumble. Just watch Faux News, if you’re not sure what I mean.

So the US, urged/cajoled/flim-flammed into two very expensive wars, clipped its own wings by cutting taxes (mostly on the very rich). This is a very deliberate plan and well documented strategy by the Project for a New American Century to hobble the government. Reliable polls of Americans make it clear that this PNAC project is grossly undemocratic. Check out reliable polls of whether Americans want Canadian-style universal medicare, for example. Note that the two countries right next to the US, Canada and Mexico, hugely influenced by American media and policies, have great democratic ‘deficits’: low voter turnout, feeble protest movements, news media that unquestioningly parrot CNN and FOX, and so on.

So, a hobbled US government, now less able to effectively repress a number of ressource-rich, of proximal, of lets-just-fuck-with-them countries, has lost control of these countries. (The exercise of deciding which country fits into which category will be left to the student.)

So, interestingly, ignoring the popular will, eliminating the rule of law, and stamping out any last vestiges of real democracy in the USA has helped (albeit in a small way) to allow the explosion of democracy in other countries.

We should be looking to much of what’s going on there to see what democracy should look like. Notable exception in the rest of the world: the Uncut movement in the UK, the massive strikes in France. Any other examples?
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Democracy has never lived, nor survived long, confined in any bastion: bastions are for soldiers, those people who must follow the orders of others without discussion or leave not to follow them.
  
  Where do you get this “bastion of democracy” crap?
  
  Democracy can only live and grow in the nurturing soil provided by the unforced hearts and undaunted and fearless spirits of the citizenry: not behind the thick, heavily-guarded walls of some fortification or bastion, with fully-equipped soldiers living on the public purse, following some unelected commanders’ or General’s orders without question.
  
  Democracy dies when the guns come out: the USA is no exception.
  
  Democracy dies in bastions.
- Thorzdad
  
  Provoking thoughts, PaulR. I can’t say I disagree.
  
  It will be very interesting (and/or scary) to see what the US’ response will be if/when this outburst of democratic want spreads to a nation our government really, truly gives a damn about…like Saudi Arabia. What are the chances of the US military being pulled-in to defend the monarchy there, against democratic protesters? If this were to happen, I suspect you’d see wall-to-wall spin in the US media, painting the protesters as an Al Qaeda front or somesuch.
  - Rayonic
    
    If I recall, Nixon (or somebody) had a plan to seize the Saudi oil fields if things really went wrong there. Nobody would actually execute that plan today, but it does pose an interesting moral quandary:
    
    What would be worse, propping up the monarchy or seizing a portion of their land and letting the rest do what it wants?
    - Thorzdad
      
      We did the bidding of the Kuwaiti government once. We have much closer ties to the Sauds. I can easily see them calling-up the White House and asking for a little help with the rabble.
- Nadreck
  
  Yes, it’s all the fault of the Yanks. We can clearly see that in the case of Gaddafi. Without the staunch support of the Bush administrations he would never have stayed in power. Just as they were, no doubt, behind the Bathists rise to power on a program of nationalising the oil industry in Syria and Iraq. If only the old Russian Empire (USSR) had been able to influence governments there none of this would have happened!
  
  I think it’s just as racist to assume that nobody outside of the States’ can set up a dictatorship all on their own (with or without some foreigners to sell out to) as it is to assume that no one could possibly achieve democracy without the States’ intervention. Gee, what if they were real people capable of making good and bad decisions? What if they had the same percentage of psycho, megalomaniacs as every other population?
  
  Up until now none of the people who are obsessed with the US, for or against, have cared a fig for any of these people. If the local fascist was all for fighting various flavours of war with Israel to provide a distraction from his incompetence and butchery, the Left was happy with that. Anyone who suggested that Gaddafi wasn’t an angel with a halo over his head was denounced as a racist and a Zionist tool. The Right’s obsession with access to natural resources at any cost to the locals has been commented on in depth here. I find both of their attempts to now declare “solidarity” with these people laughable.
  
  The West and it’s tired 19th Century ideologies of Left and Right are irrelevant to all of this. Eg. The UN spent this week cooking up another Emergency Resolution wrt to the latest round of real estate disputes between the Palestinians and the Jews. Nothing else of interest happening this week! What do you expect when all of the Human Rights bodies there are stuffed with the stooges of the dictatorships that are going down now? (90% of all Emergency Resolutions from the UN are about Israel.)
  
  This is about Demographics and not any yabber-yabber ideologies. It’s the swing’in Sixties in the Middle East. Everyone is under 20 and they aren’t going to put up with the Establishment anymore!
- JayConverse
  
  Wonderful and erudite, Paul. Don’t forget to include the Caliphate!
rebdav

How does one break the banana republic cycle of dictator-popular revolt-dictator-repeat?
Why are Eastern Europe, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan free but many other nations are still stuck in the cycle?
I think it is the real possibility of joining a middle class which is not possible in a liberal education starved population.
Natural resources or a powerful but silent work force are economic incentives begging to be robbed.
Best case scenario seems to be a well educated population with few resources worth robbing.
- Anonymous
  
  Not all cultures are equal, not all peoples of the world organize the same, not every country happens to have the right leaders in the right places at the right times, etc., in order to create a democratic government. There is no shame in being from a country that is not, yet, a free country. It just means that the country has not, yet, been lucky enough to experience the right set of conditions to harbor a democratic government.
mdh

Arms sales to these countries is a remnant of the cold war. If we didn’t the Soviets would have.

The cold war is over, these arrangements are no longer so useful.
gwailo_joe

â€œThe tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.â€ â€” Thomas Jefferson