Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Bahrain today (Via the Angry Arab)

"A comrade from Bahrain today: "I took part in the demonstrations today. Below is what I saw there. You can quote me in your blog, but please don't mention my name:
My friends and I took part in occupying the Lulu roundabout. It's packed with tens of thousands of people by now. I could tell that the Islamists are mostly represented by the shia ones, and that only the secular ones are cross-sectarian, but there was only what I'd consider the bare-minimum sectarian-neutral religious chants, which didn't really bother me. It seems that they have learned their lesson from Tunisia and Egypt well.
On the roundabout, a little village very quickly began to take on a life of its own. People distributed food and beverages and picked up garbage. Personally, I helped with the latter. Some of my friends went back and forth to the malls nearby to buy rolls of plastic bags for garbage collection and fruits to distribute to people.
Ibrahim Sharif of the secular and left-leaning Waad was there too. I met and talked to him for the first time. I asked him if he thinks that calls for an elected a Prime Minister to replace of the incumbent Khalifa bin Salman are realistic. He said if there was ever a time to realize such demands, now is it. I then asked him about the mysterious absence of the police, which were present at first but then disappeared; he said that they can't even fire a teargas canister at us at this point because doing that alone would lead to a stampede and therefore many deaths. This probably won't happen because of all the international attention we're getting, he said."
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