Turning Arab Spring into Summer

By Richard Howitt MEP

Democracy activists from Bahrain’s revolution of February 14th appear in specially convened military courts in the same clothes they have worn from more than two months in secret custody and with the scars from the torture they have suffered still visible on their bodies.

They have been unable to see relatives or lawyers prior to the court appearance, and have just thirty seconds to whisper to those present: ‘We are still alive.’

But as the trial of 48 doctors who are being tried for plotting against the Gulf state’s ruling royal family because they had the temerity to treat injured democracy protesters reaches its final verdict next week, the question is – are the revolutionary aspirations of those activists are also still alive?

These first-hand testimonies are given to me as part of a covert meeting with opposition forces from across the Arab world, convened by Socialist and Democrat MEPs this week to pursue an active role in the next steps across the region for democratic transition.

‘All interrogation is done by being blindfolded and accompanied by beating. No-one is spared from torture – not even medical consultants of 50 or 60 years of age,’ I am told by the Bahraini opposition activist whose name must remain hidden as he has already had threatening telephone calls for speaking out and another member of his family arrested and beaten.

‘The government have announced what they call a national dialogue, but what is happening in Bahrain today is totally revenge.

‘Unless the harassment, arrest and continued terrorising of the opposition is ended, which of us is prepared to speak openly?’

The language of the demands his party make of European socialists are all-too familiar to human rights activists: the release of political prisoners, justice for the victims of arbitrary arrest and torture, a genuine dialogue for democracy free from fear.

But compared with continued bloody protests in Libya, Yemen and in Syria, the test for Europe and the international community in Bahrain is whether we are prepared see the Arab Spring stalled where the forces of repression appear to have overcome those of democracy?

And it is the doctors and other medical professionals of Bahrain’s Salmaniya Hospital who face sentences next week that could include the death penalty, which test our resolve as much as that of those who seek to crush the protest.

Injured protesters had no choice but to attend the hospital, because it housed the country’s only blood bank. A tented village sprang up in its grounds of friends and relatives concerned for the victims. Spontaneously it became a focus for the protest.

Symbolic of the vicious crackdown inflicted throughout the whole country, the response of the military was to occupy the hospital, create a cordon on the building’s sixth floor from where protesters were taken never to return and then to arrest doctors on what we are told are trumped-up charges of carrying arms.

But it is the carrying of arms by the military which perhaps holds the key to how Europe can still exert pressure.

‘Bahrain doesn’t need trade or aid but it does need security,’ I am told.

Indeed attempts to suppress the country’s Shia majority are motivated as much by the external threat from Iran, as by a desire for the ruling family with its Sunni religion to maintain control.

If Europe were to say continued security protection including training and supply of arms – many of which the regime purchases from Britain – are at stake, there is still a chance that the country’s leaders can be persuaded to start to respect political rights at home.

It is now commonplace in Brussels for there to be an admission that fear of Iran and its state-sponsorship of Hamas and Hesbollah led the European Union too far in muting its criticisms of human rights abuses amongst its Arab allies in the past. In relation to Bahrain there remains even more reason to make up ground after the unfortunate description by one of the EU’s top foreign policy officials to the deaths of protesters being “accidental.”

As Spring turns in to summer, there is now a chance to show that Europe means it when we say we have learnt lessons too, by being resolute in standing up for democracy to the rulers of Bahrain.

And if we do so, instead of facing the prospect of their own deaths, the doctors can get back to saving the lives of others..