On 21 April Zainab Al-Khawaja was arrested for taking part in a peaceful protest against the continuing detention of her father, prominent Bahraini activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja. Once at the police station, female officers turned off the security cameras and proceeded to deliver a beating, kicking and shoving her against the walls, suffocating her with batons while watching male officers insulted her. She was denied visits for more than a week, her family finally getting access last Sunday, 29 April.

Over the past two days (Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd May), Zainab was sent before the courts, where she discovered the state had not one but four charges ready for her: that she verbally insulted an officer, that she assaulted another at an “illegal gathering”, that she “obstructed traffic” and, finally, that she verbally assaulted yet another officer. She was declared not guilty of the first offence but had all her other cases postponed to next week.

These is not the first time she’s dragged before the courts. Indeed, she is still facing earlier charges – of “assaulting an officer”, “illegal gathering” and “inciting hatred against the regime” – dating from Dec 2011, after taking part in another protest.

A few days ago, faced with the serious prospect of Zainab’s father, Abdulhadi finally succumbing to his hunger strike (which had lasted more than 80 days so far), the Bahraini regime removed him from his hospital bed and kept him incommunicado for a week; rejecting all requests from his family and lawyers to see or talk to him. When he was eventually allowed to communicate with them three days ago, he revealed that he had been forcibly-fed (a treatment that falls under the Geneva convention’s definition of torture).

The bahraini regime must release Zainab Al-Khawaja and drop all its absurd charges against her, as well as release all political prisoners in its jails. If you want to help achieve this, please visit the Bahrain Human Rights Centre website. And spread the word about what is happening in the country. The Al-Khawajas’ courage is a testament to human dignity in the face of oppression, the least we can do is tell the world about it.

See Also:
Editorial | Bahrain: on the unintentional eloquence of press releases
Politics | Al-Khawaja: Bahrain’s peaceful resistance, the world’s shameful silence

Local graffiti urging the Formula One authorities to cancel the Bahrain Grand Prix

It takes a lot for something as bland and functional as a press release to make an impression of any sort. So credit is due to the august Bahrain News Agency for releasing one of the most absurd and imbecilic texts ever allowed to see the light.

It’s worth reproducing it in full:

Manama, April 26 (BNA) — His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa sent a cable of thanks to His Royal Highness the Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, in response to HRH’s cable of congratulations to HM on the success of the Bahrain Grand Prix Race.

HM the King extended his thanks and appreciation to HRH the Prime Minister for his great role in supporting this combined effort by all loyal and honorable citizens of Bahrain. He also expressed his pride at the success of the F1 race on a local, regional and global level, which proved that the people of Bahrain have the readiness and high patriotic spirit that qualifies them to carry big responsibilities and rise above to overcome challenges in order to achieve what’s in the interest of this country.

You read it right: a press release that brings us the urgent breaking news that the king has said ‘thank you’ to his prime minister (and uncle) in response to the prime minister saying thank you to his king … in response to the king hosting a ‘successful’ Formula One Grand Prix event.

Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that I’ve put ‘successful’ in inverted commas; as I’m still getting the feeling a different word might be more appropriate in this instance. After all, when William Hague – the very person who sold you your weaponry and tear gas – finds himself compelled to publicly ask you to tone things down a notch and “show restraint”, it’s probably time to reconsider how ‘successful’ is this ‘success’ you’re being so chuffed about.

Indeed, when not sending each other state-sponsored billets doux, Bahrain’s rulers might want to take a look at what journalists who’ve tried to cover the events over the weekend had to say. After all, it takes a lot for mainstream media operations to go off-message; so when you pay a PR agency 1.5 million pounds to fix your image abroad only to find hitherto-dependable establishment organs such as the BBC and the New York Times openly describing your actions as a “regime crackdown”; and when even meekly outlets  such as the Daily Beast start calling you “tyrannical”, you really ought to start paying attention.

Take, for instance, the report released yesterday by Reporters without borders (RWB), which begins:

“The Manama Formula One Grand Prix finally went ahead despite all the tension and protests in Bahrain, but many foreign and local journalists paid the price of the government’s determination to prevent video and photo coverage of the crackdown taking place away from the race track.”

I don’t know about HM and HRH, but - no matter how the PR agency spins it - this seems a rather quaint thing to say about an event that had achieved “success… on a local, regional and global level”.

The RWB report is worth reading in full, though some illustrative highlights should suffice here. The report shows the Grand Prix to have been so successful that Jonathan Miller and his Channel 4 News crew were chased by riot police, arrested and deported for filming a protest. Also part of this success were journalists working for British, Japanese, German, Danish and other news outlets, who were also arrested and threatened.

In fact, the Bahraini monarchy has made such a success of its attempt to show how successful it has been these past days and weeks that Reporters without Borders ranked the country’s capital, Manama, “among the 10 most dangerous places for journalists”. Not exactly what you’d want plastered across your tourism adverts, yet hardly a surprise when you see photos that, as the RWB report explains, “show a police officer, carefully placing a tear gas canister close to the photographer who realized that there were no demonstrators nearby at the time“. Indeed, Reporters Without Borders are so incensed at these abuses that they’ve launched a petition ”condemning the Bahraini monarchy’s propaganda and its use of violence against professional and citizen journalists.”

As for those unlucky journalists who were simply repeatedly denied entry, Bahrain’s Foreign minister – and Twitter sensation – Khalid Alkhalifa, kindly volunteered some free career advice:

If any here to cover ugly bloody confrontations, go to syria. Here we have a grand Prix to enjoy. Also, there is an ongoing war n the Sudan

— Khalid Alkhalifa (@khalidalkhalifa) April 20, 2012

Quite.

Let us remember that the wonderful Grand Prix weekend featured the not so wonderful killing by security officers of Salah Abbas Habib al-Qattan, a protester shot on Saturday night and whose body was held back from his family for more than 24 hours. Why the delay? Because the authorities didn’t want his funeral to take place on Sunday, as would be customary under Islamic law, so as not to spoil the fun and cheerfulness of the race goers. When the body was eventually returned to them so they could bury him, it was found riddled with birdshot and bullet wounds (you can see the graphic images for yourself).

In the meantime detained human rights activist Abdulhadi Alkahawaja today entered the 78th day of his hunger strike – having stopped taking water and liquids since April 19th. His family and lawyers have had no contact with him since April 23rd, despite repeated pleas and requests. Many are fearing the worst.

Inexplicably, none of this seems newsworthy enough to register on the BNA’s radar, presumably due to the backlog of in-house Thank You notes and self-congratulations still in the pipeline. But not to worry, John Yates, former senior UK police officer currently in the pay of the Bahraini monarchy, is on hand with his “nothing to see here, guv’nor” comic relief routine.

Indeed, as far as ‘Yates of the Yard’  is concerned, “the abiding image I have of the Grand Prix last weekend was of thousands of people enjoying themselves at the post‑event parties.” Of course, this is the same John Yates who, after taking a long hard look into the original 2006 phone hacking investigation, had concluded there was “nothing to see here, guv’nor” there either. You might start to see why the Bahrainis thought he would be just the man for the job.

The Bahrain Formula One GP sham has been an object lesson in the political and moral bankruptcy of our age. When calls rose for it to be cancelled, the obscene Bernie Ecclestone called security fears a “bunch of nonsense” while William Hague tamely maintained this was “a decision for the F1″. For her part, UK Tory Chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi, when asked why Bahrain’s King was a guest at the Queen’s forthcoming diamond Jubilee celebrations, bravely blamed it all on the Queen, despite knowing very well that no name could stay on that guest list without David Cameron’s explicit approval.

Despite Bahrain registering the second highest per-capita deaths and arrests of the Arab Spring, the powerful of the world continue to look away. Yesterday, the US ambassador to the UN, Dr Susan Rice, insisted her “patience is exhausted” and that the “continuation of bloodshed is not only unacceptable but reprehensible”. However, she was talking about Syria, the “good” Arab Spring, not Bahrain’s “bad” spring, which apparently can go to hell as far as she’s concerned.

This is hardly novel, quite the opposite. Whenever confronted with a legitimate popular uprising, this has always been the bottom line: if the ruling regime is people ‘we’ don’t like and can’t rely on, as in Syria, then power to the people! long live democracy! stop the killings! reforms are pointless! down with any ceasefires! here are some tanks! If, on the other hand, the country in question hosts the US fifth fleet, provides stable oil supplies and buys billions-worth of Western weaponry a year… well, look, there’s a reform process, and a commission of inquiry, and it’s pretty safe really and who can tell if Bahrain’s democracy protesters aren’t, in fact, evil violent extremist Shia sectarian Iranian agents? And did we mention Iran? And so on and so forth.

In this context, the BNA press release is in fact supremely eloquent. It perfectly conveys what Bahrain’s rulers and their Western allies know full well: as long as power is on your side, you’re safe and can get away with anything. No wonder they’re writing themselves such adoring press releases.

When David Cameron was asked about this double standard a few days ago, he airily lectured us that “Bahrain is not Syria”. He was right, of course, but in infinitely more ways than he had intended.

Are you trying to get a sense of what is wrong with modern party politics? Well, you could invest months slaving over hundreds of dry academic treatises and sombre hefty tomes..

OR you could spend the next 66 seconds watching the clip below, of Australian workplace relations minister Bill Shorten trying not to have an opinion.

In Shorten’s defence, his embarrassing debacle is no more than the inescapable culmination of the deathly logic of ‘party line’ thinking. This is what the modern political game expects and exacts from anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a politician: never stray off message, truth is always what the party says it is. As Groucho Marx unimprovably put it “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others”.

Shorten’s error wasn’t that he forgot the rules of the game; but that he’d learned them far too well for his own good.

John Derbyshire’s article in Taki’s Magazine

Over the years, I’ve read more than my fair share of cretinous, offensive, half-baked, frivolous and surreal articles. However, I have never found myself, upon finishing a piece, discovering that my lower jaw had literally dropped open.

Until now.

“The Talk: Nonblack Version” is an article by John Derbyshire, a British-born, US-based conservative author and journalist who mostly writes for National Review, the de-facto house organ of American conservatism. The piece in question was featured in another publication, the aptly named Taki’s magazine.

First, some background: on February 26, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year old African-American teenager, was shot dead by a neighbourhood watch vigilante named George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, who was carrying a gun, claimed he was attacked by Martin – an unarmed man half his size – and had acted in self defence. This, according to a peculiar Florida law called ‘Stand Your Ground’, entitled him to be released without being charged or even questioned in depth (as a prime suspect would normally be).

Within days, increasingly compelling evidence started to emerge showing the version of events advanced by Zimmerman and the Florida police was mostly a pile of fabrications. It became apparent that Martin was deemed suspicious, then was followed and shot dead, simply for being black. The wave of public anger and rage in response soon grew wider and more intense, compounded by the perceived indifference, even contempt, by the authorities towards the victim, his family and community.

As the media coverage turned to the role of institutional racism in causing this tragedy and many others, many African-American parents voiced their concerns. They revealed how they often found themselves having to sit down with their children to instruct them on what to say or do in situations where they had to deal with white authority figures, such as police officers. The aim of “the talk”, they explained, was to keep their children safe, to protect them from being harmed or killed.

Interestingly, Derbyshire decided the real issue wasn’t the context and reasons that would cause a parent to feel such a measure was needed in the first place, but “the talk” itself. How dare black parents tell their kids what to do when confronted with white people with guns?

Outraged, Derbyshire hit back, or thought he did. “There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too.” he warns at the outset before proceeding to deliver his own “Nonblack Version”, addressed to his white kids, on how to deal with black people.

After a few tentative throat-clearing banalities such as “among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black”, he warms to his theme:

“A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.”

Soon enough, Derbyshire joyfully hits his stride and, once he got going, clearly found it very hard to know when – or how – to stop. The result is one of the most unhinged and repugnant displays of straightforward bigotry ever committed to print by a nominally serious journalist in a nominally serious publication.

Sentence after poisonous sentence, an awkward realisation starts to coalesce that we’re watching a man drown into a sea of long-held, long-repressed prejudices. It’s not long before we find him urging his children to ”avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally”, to “stay out of heavily black neighborhoods”, “If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date”. ”Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks”, “If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.” ”Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress”.

And just when you think he’s bound to snap out of his trance, he makes a mighty leap overboard ”the mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites.” ”In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs.” ”You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with intelligent and well-socialized blacks” because ”you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.”

Throughout, Derbyshire can’t help betraying how very clever he thinks his piece is. You can almost picture him in the darkness of his attic, typing away whilst muttering “This will give ‘em a taste of their own medicine. That’ll show ‘em”. Unfortunately for him, he’s nothing near as clever as he thinks he is. Far from the unanswerable piece of rhetorical machinery he imagined himself building, he ended up overreaching and unmasking himself in the process.

Calculating he would get away with his vituperations by cloaking them in pseudo-objective, scientific, neutral language, he was alas unable to stop himself from littering the piece with giveaways such as that all-too-telling ”swamped”. In other words, he had shown himself to be a moron. A conclusion his fellow-travellers on the american right seem to be reaching en masse.

It’s important to note that the most telling thing about this astonishing episode is not so much the piece itself, however disturbing, but the fact that Derbyshire felt emboldened and confident enough not only to sit down and write it but to send it out into the world for everyone to read. This clearly was a man who felt he was delivering home truths to an understanding, receptive, even grateful audience.

Of course, Derbyshire’s confidence that he was acting within the accepted norm, however misplaced, is not that surprising when you consider not only the legacy and ongoing reality of institutional racial prejudice in the US but also the nasty wave of Trayvon-bashing that has been sweeping the conservative media since the killing. From the outset, the American right decided to go on the offensive in a determined attempt to turn the murder of an unarmed black teenager into an indictment of the African-American community itself.

However, many of Derbyshire’s colleagues and allies, no-doubt alarmed at the horrific embarrassment of having one of their own spill the beans in such a disastrously public fashion, are queueing up to collectively throw him under the bus. In a curt web posting, Rich Lowry, his editor at NR, called Derbyshire’s views “appalling”, saying they were shared by “no one at National Review”. The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehesi Coates explicitly labelled Derbyshire a “racist”, while Forbes magazine called for him to be sacked. Jonah Goldberg, another NR colleague, denounced the piece as “fundamentally indefensible and offensive”.

It remains to be seen what the fallout from Derbyshire’s hubris-fuelled candour will be, both for himself and, more crucially, for the wider issues at stake. Calls have already been made for National Review to fire him, and the magazine’s eventual response*, whatever it may be, will certainly not be the final word on the story.

Still, in a climate where we are routinely told, often in impatient, eye-rolling tones, that the battle against racism has already been won, moments like Derbyshire’s outburst are salutary reminders that, however far we might have come, there’s still a long way to go.

John Derbyshire, you racist moron, we salute you.

* Update: On April 7, 2012 National Review announced it had sacked John Derbyshire. In a statement on its website, editor Rich Lowry wrote “[Derbyshire's] latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. [Derbyshire] is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.”

In particular, the world’s non-Americans will no doubt be deeply impressed with – and mightily reassured by – the poll published today by Public Policy Polling, surveying likely voters in both Alabama and Missisipi. You can sample the full details here, but for now, a few delightful snapshots:

ALABAMA

Q22 Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim, or are you not sure?
Christian 14%
Muslim 45%
Not sure 41%

Q23 Do you believe in evolution, or not?
Believe in evolution 26%
Do not 60%
Not sure 13

Q24 Do you think that interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?
Legal 67%
Illegal 21%
Not sure 12%

MISSISSIPPI

Q22 Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim, or are you not sure?
Christian 12%
Muslim 52%
Not sure 36%

Q23 Do you believe in evolution, or not?
Believe in evolution 22%
Do not 66%
Not sure 11%

Q24 Do you think that interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?
Legal 54%
Illegal 29%
Not sure 17%

Before you ask, yes, this is a poll conducted this century, which leave us with a simple set of questions: is it time for humanitarian intervention? Can we really afford to have these extremist backwaters festering with ignorance and bigotry? What if they, heaven forbid, got hold of nuclear weapons? Shall Mexico invade and stabilise the failing states? Shall we send in a hundred (or a million) Ugandan teachers? Shall we impose sanctions until a peaceful transition process is in place?

Whatever the solution, the free world must act, fast.

#freemaya

Yesterday, a young activist was jailed for peacefully protesting against crimes committed by her own government. If you’re trying to figure out why you can’t remember seeing anything about this on the evening news, you’re wasting your time. Maya Evans is not an Iranian, Russian or Zimbabwean dissident, but a British young woman protesting against British official policies. You won’t be hearing about her story because, as far as most of the media is concerned, there is no story.

Maya was jailed for 13 days for her principled refusal to pay £300 in fines and costs incurred after a court case in November 2009. She was arrested in May that year for taking part in a nonviolent “die-in for NATO’s victims in Afghanistan” outside Britain’s military base at Northwood, an action held to mark the second anniversary of a NATO bombing attack, on 27 May 2007, that killed 47 Afghan civilians. The protesters had demanded an end to the bombing (which continues to date) and the withdrawal of British troops from the country. For this act of symbolic protest, Maya was convicted of, wait for it, “obstructing the highway”. Her very presence was deemed illegal.

How a prosecutor managed to conduct the entire case whilst maintaining a straight face we shall probably never know. Everyone remembers the iconic photo, from the Tienanmen square protests in 1989, of one brave Chinese man standing defiantly – shopping bag in hand – thus blocking the path of a file of Army Tanks, and preventing them from advancing. He, too, was “obstructing the highway” yet had the Chinese authorities attempted to charge him with such an offence, one can only guess the effects on the earth’s geological structure of the entire planet erupting into a synchronised howl of disbelieving laughter. Instead, here in Britain, in 2012, a young woman is sent to prison for “obstructing the highway”. With hardly a peep from the media.

This is not the first time Maya’s activism has unnerved our notoriously thin-skinned establishment. In 2005, she was convicted for reading the names of the Iraq war dead opposite the Cenotaph … without police permission, thus becoming the first person in the UK to be convicted under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005) for taking part in an “unauthorised demonstration within 1 km of Parliament Square”.

You read that right: it is a crime to read a list of names without the say so of the police. Again, had this happened in Caracas or Havana, British politicians and journalists would have had a field day, loudly proclaiming their mystification as to how the Venezuelan or Cuban justice systems had failed to collapse under the weight of their own ridiculousness. In Maya’s case, they merely shrugged and moved along.

In 2010, Maya won “a partial victory” in the High Court, regarding British complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees. She recently returned from a month-long visit to Afghanistan where she worked with Afghan peace activists. During her time there, she also met with refugees and human rights workers.

Her own words on the subject are certainly worth repeating. At her sentencing yesterday, later echoed in a letter to the Guardian from her prison cell, she told the court: ”I don’t feel what I did on 27 May 2009 was a crime… We were trying to highlight the war crimes that had been committed.” She also spoke of how “Meeting the victims of US and British policies has only strengthened [her] conviction that we need to terminate Britain’s role in this senseless and bloody war,” adding that ”Afghan peace campaigners urged me to do all I can to stop British involvement in their country. It is all of our responsibility to campaign against the death of innocent Afghan civilians, to pressurise our government which currently has blood in its hands.”

How is it that we criminalise not the killing of Afghan civilians but the denunciations of such killings? How can we seriously lecture others on the merits of free speech and democratic openness when a young activist is deemed so threatening to the official narrative that she must be made an example of? Her peaceful act of protest considered so subversive that it cannot be allowed to go unpunished? How can a justice system worthy of the name consider her prosecution and jailing a justified use of taxpayers’ money yet have nothing to say (or see) about those who sent a nation to war based on dodgy dossiers and bare-faced mendacities; at a cost, still rising, of thousands of Iraqi, Afghan and British lives?

Maya’s persecution is immoral, stupid and shameful, but it would be a mistake to think of it as an isolated instance of no wider consequence. The post-9/11 decade has witnessed a full-on assault on our civil liberties, notably our right to hold power to account through public protest and speech. Slowly, layer by layer, freedoms that had been taken for granted for centuries are stripped away from us. What was legal yesterday needs a permit today and will be a crime tomorrow.

As we have seen in the eviction of Occupy LSX on Tuesday night, it’s a very steep slope and many are starting to realise we have sleepwalked ourselves into a reality where young men and women praying peacefully on the steps of St Paul’s are violently shoved and pushed and manhandled because the “law” said so. Those who airily and routinely dismiss this drift as, at worst, a “necessary evil” should beware: they might find themselves at the very sharp end of it before long.

A country that jails its Maya Evans is a country that urgently, desperately, needs reminding that while freedom is always bought dearly it is, all-too-often, cheaply surrendered through ignorance, cowardice and silence.

Do not be silent. Send Maya a (cheerful!) message today at:

Maya Evans
HMP Bronzefield
Woodthorpe Road
Ashford
Middlesex
TW15 3JZ

Some advice about writing letters to prisoners can be found here. Please tweet about Maya using #freemaya

In 2006, Maya’s book Naming the Dead, was published by JNV, to get a copy, click here.

Illegal shmilegal! Just look at this beauty!

Does Jonathan Marcus really exist? I ask because his name appears on a BBC article, published today, headed “How Israel might strike at Iran” that cannot possibly have been written by an actual journalist. It’s not that the piece is practically foaming at the mouth at the prospect of death being visited upon Iranians on a massive scale, or the rather fetishistic intensity of its descriptions of various killing machines (Did you know, for instance, that “The GBU-28″ is “the largest penetrating weapon available for a tactical aircraft”?).

It’s not even that, for Mr Marcus, “the great unknown question” happens to be not a variant of “Is this not insane?” but in fact “how capable these weapons would be against buried Iranian enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo”. No, Mr Marcus must be a fictional invention simply because no serious journalist would write such a long, detailed piece about a looming act of war without once using the words “death”, “civilian” or “casualties”.

I think I know what happened. The BBC clearly needed something quick on the topic and opted to take a short cut, in this case by copy-pasting from an internal policy document from the Israeli ministry of “Information” and inventing a byline to go with it. And yes, I appreciate the Beeb is under a lot of financial strain, that budgetary screws are forever tightening, but still, who would have guessed the straits were this dire?

There is, of course, the possibility that Jonathan Marcus does exist (as a “BBC Diplomatic Correspondent” no less) and is simply struggling with knotty concepts like “truth”, “balance” and “is”. In which case, and in a spirit of public service, I’d like to respectfully offer him some suggestions, free of charge, on how to write his next piece on the topic.

So. Let’s start at the beginning: you’re a journalist working for arguably the most reputable news organisation in the world. Your assignment is to write about an impending aggression by one Middle Eastern country against its neighbour. It’s a tough one: how do you report the possibility of a devastating attack that could lead to the deaths of thousands, if not millions, of innocent civilians, not to mention a likely conflagration that would reverberate across the region and beyond for years, possibly decades?

First, it could be a good a idea to tell your readers that such an attack is and would be illegal under international law. This means the country committing it would be guilty of breaking said international law, and that its leaders, and anyone else who supports them, would be liable to be arrested, charged and convicted for war crimes. This includes not only Netenyahu and Barak, but David Cameron and William Hague. You may choose to mention that war crimes are a very bad thing, though you will often find your readers are quite aware of this.

Second, it would be useful to explain to your readers that the country you think is allegedly “under threat”, Israel, has hundreds of nuclear weapons, is by far the dominant military power in the region, and has been, for a few years now, vocally and regularly issuing announcements of its intention to attack Iran. You may even mention that Iran is directly surrounded by more than forty US military bases hosting hundreds of thousands of US army personnel. Indeed, some readers might even suspect “under threat” is a far more appropriate description of Iran than of the countries openly threatening to attack it.

Thirdly, some of your readers might think it relevant to know that no evidence has been presented so far, from anyone, that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme or is seeking to develop one. Yes, there has been a lot of noise, many ifs and buts, mainly from people who support an attack (and, ahem, ever-loyal media lackeys always comfortable at the war drum), but conclusive evidence? Nada. Indeed, you can tell your readers about the recent IAEA report, which found no conclusive evidence of a weapons programme. Or you can quote Leon Panetta, the US Secretary of Defence, who recently said of Iranian leaders, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No”.

Fourthly, yes, you like F16s and other death machines, we understand that, but you might find that not all readers are interested in drooling accounts of whatever shiny hardware Israel might be unleashing on its neighbour. In fact – and you will find this quaint – some readers are quite interested in the human toll of whatever actions you will be predicting, especially if these actions happen to be urged in their name. This is a good moment to share with them the “deaths of thousands, if not millions, of innocent civilians, not to mention a likely conflagration that would reverberate across the region and beyond for years, possibly decades” bit.

However, were you to adopt these suggestions, you must be warned about the consequences. Your articles will become informative, making your readers a lot more aware of the context and realities of the situation. This would almost certainly mean a surge in popular opposition to this planned illegal act of aggression. It might even make it very awkward for those who seek or support an attack on Iran (including your own government) to continue going about their task in peace. Indeed, if enough journalists were to join you in adopting these suggestions, politicians might even start seeing war as a horrible thing.

To recap, your articles will help inform millions, save thousands of lives, prevent an act of wanton aggression, and protect international law. On the other hand, you might find yourself out of a job.

Like I said, it’s a tough one.

Palestinians protest in solidarity with Khader Adnan

Somewhere in the Middle East, a 33-year old man is today (20th Feb) entering the 65th day of a hunger strike. He is currently lying – as he has done for weeks – with one hand, and one leg, shackled to his hospital bed. By the time you read this, he could be dead.

Of course, had he been an Iranian opposition journalist, or a Cuban dissident, or a detained Israeli soldier, his name would be plastered across your evening news, his face, and that of his pregnant wife and two young children, ubiquitous on front pages and news websites. Cameron, Sarkosy, Obama, Ashton, Clinton and other human rights specialists would be queueing up hourly for their turn to grandstand and hyperventilate about his cruel treatment, about the need to “do something” to help stop an unspeakable crime from happening.

Unfortunately for the young man, he is Palestinian and, unless you happen to be an activist, chances are his face, and his name, Khader Adnan, will be news to you.

Adnan, a baker, economics student, and political activist in the Islamic Jihad movement, was arrested at his home by masked Israeli soldiers on Dec 17th 2011. He has been detained without charge ever since. This in itself is hardly novel; tens of thousands of Palestinians are routinely subjected to “administrative detention”, a practice that contravenes most basic tenets of the right to fair and due process. The difference, this time, is that Adnan decided to say “enough”, and to pay whatever it takes to prove he means it.

Indeed, “whatever it takes” is increasingly likely to mean Adnan will pay for his stance with his life. A day after his arrest, he began a hunger strike in protest at his detention and ill-treatment. Almost a month later, on January 8, 2012, he was given a four-month administrative detention order, which he rejected and appealed immediately.

A few days ago, on February 12th, an Israeli military court rejected his appeal (lodged from his hospital bed). Adnan’s appeal statement provides chilling details of the inhumane and degrading treatment he had sustained at the hands of the IDF, including being repeatedly interrogated, whilst shackled to a chair, and subjected to threats to himself and his family.

In a letter released by his lawyer, he wrote:

“I have been humiliated, beaten, and harassed by interrogators for no reason, and thus I swore to God I would fight the policy of administrative detention to which I and hundreds of my fellow prisoners fell prey.”

Adnan insists he will maintain his hunger strike unless released or charged. The court insists on doing neither, ordering him to remain detained, without charge, until May 8th. A death sentence in all but name. The military judge in charge of the appeal, blissfully unburdened with any moral qualms about wilfully sending a man to his death, blamed Khader for his “choice” to continue his hunger strike.

Throughout this sorry but humbling tale of courage in the face of cruelty, the silence of the world community has been deafening. Baroness Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs big honcho, has not found it appropriate to utter a single word on the matter, despite having plenty of time in the past for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who was neither dying nor a civilian prisoner.*

Similarly, until a few days ago, the international media, including the BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera, had little time for Adnan, the longest Palestinian hunger striker to date. There have now been some breaches into this wall of indifference, but only as a result of immense pressure from activists and concerned citizens from around the world, incensed at their leaders’ shameful averting of the eyes away from this unfolding tragedy.

Thankfully, many of those who know what’s at a stake have refused to keep quiet. Tommy McKearney, a former member of the IRA – and who had spent 53 days on hunger strike in 1980 – sent a video message of solidarity with Adnan. Over the past few days, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners have launched their own hunger strikes to show their support and appreciation for Adnan’s bravery and determination.

Amnesty and other NGOs have issued repeated, and increasingly desperate appeals for somebody to act before the irreparable happens. Israeli human rights group Addameer announced in a statement earlier this week that it “holds the international community responsible for not taking action to save Khader’s life”. It also demanded “that the European Union, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross intervene with Israel immediately before it is too late.”

Of course, Adnan was from the start fully aware the Israelis would be happy to leave him to die, defiantly proclaiming he was “dying to live”. What he might not have been expecting, however, was that the rest of the world would choose to look the other way. It is not too late for us to save his life, and our dignity.

Sign Amnesty’s petition to demand the immediate release or charging of Khader Adnan and other Palestinian prisoners, and the ending of the practice of administrative detention.

For more information on Khader Adnan visit http://samidoun.ca/ or join the Facebook group.

[*Update 17/02: Ashton's office has released a statement calling for "Israel to do all it can". In other words, washing its hands of the matter].

On the first anniversary of Bahrain’s pro-democracy uprising, prominent Bahraini human rights activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja enters his 7th day on hunger strike. He was hospitalized on Feb 10, 2012 because of failing health situation. On Feb 11, he refused IV and is only drinking water with glucose. A month ago, Alkhawaja almost fell into a coma due to low BP and blood sugar.

Below, we publish an open letter sent last week by Alkhawaja, who is a Danish resident, to the Danish Foreign Affairs minister.

His Excellency,
The Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Denmark

Dear Sir,

Subject: My case as a Bahraini Dane detained in Bahrain

Firstly, allow me to thank you and other Danish officials, especially at the Danish embassy, for your concern in my case since I was arrested in Bahrain on 8 April, 2011. My gratitude is extended to every Danish citizen who heard about my case and sympathised with me, including members of the parliament, media and human rights defenders.

Secondly, I would like to stress the positive influence on me of the 12 years that I had spent in Denmark, along with my beloved wife and brave four daughters, during the period from March 1989 until June 2001 when we returned to Bahrain following a general amnesty.  At the beginning of that period I received my first professional training in human rights by the Danish Centre for Human Rights, which took place at the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Copenhagen.  This training and other forms of indirect support had an important impact on my voluntary work as the director of the Bahrain Human Rights Organisation (BHRO), based in Copenhagen, which played an important role in the positive developments that took place in Bahrain a decade ago.  More important, living in Denmark and experiencing first hand its social and political system inspired my work for democracy and human rights in Bahrain and the MENA region during the last 10 years, as an activist, researcher and trainer; in Bahrain as the director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), from 2002 until 2008, and at the regional level, as the MENA regional field coordinator for Front Line, the international foundation for the protection of human rights defenders, based in Dublin, Ireland, (Aug. 2008 until Feb, 2011).

Thirdly, I have no regrets that I had to pay a price for my work to promote human rights.  It is a serious business to address issues such as corruption, inequality, and discrimination in order to promote the interests of members of the ruling family, and documenting arbitrary detention and torture by the brutal National Security Apparatus.  So, as much as it was unfair, it was no real surprise when I was detained in 2004, severely beaten during peaceful protests in 2005 and 2006, subjected to unfair trials, travel ban and continuous defamation campaigns in official and semi-official media, and eventually, as a part of the crackdown on the wide popular protests since 14 February, 2011, I was severely beaten, arbitrarily detained, held in solitary confinement and subjected to torture for more than two months, brought before a military court on charges faked by the National Security Apparatus, such as “instigating hatred against the regime” and “planning to overthrow it” and eventually being sentenced to life imprisonment, a sentence which I have been serving to date.

Fourthly, it was a great comfort to hear about the mounting support for my case from the people and activists in Bahrain and from the colleagues and friends on the regional and international levels, in addition to statements and campaigns calling for the release of myself and other activists, by the office of the UN High Commission for Human Rights and International organisations including Human Rights Watch, Front Line Defenders, Amnesty International and Human Rights First.  It has also been of great comfort to get visits by Danish diplomats during court sessions and at Jaw Prison, especially by the kind assistant to the ambassador in Saudi-Arabia, who kept me and my family informed about the concern and efforts made by Danish officials regarding my case.

Fifthly, as a recommendation from a Danish citizen, I would appreciate it if my case would be legally researched to examine the numerous violations I have been subjected to and the legal basis for keeping me in prison.  Based on such research the Danish authorities could take more actions regarding my case.  Taking in consideration the findings of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), formed by the King, which documented my case and used it, along with some other cases, as a base for its final observations and recommendations related to the issues; arrests, arbitrary detention, torture and unfair trial.  A summary of my case was published in the final report as case No.8 on page 426.  Find also the relative general observations numbers; (1693) to (1706).

Sixthly, as a human rights defender, regardless of being a Danish citizen, I am entitled for protection by EU member states in accordance with the EU-guidelines on the protection of human rights defenders around the world.  Hence, I would suggest that the Danish authorities kindly put forth more efforts, in coordination with other EU-state members, to take whatever possible actions at the regional level, such as in embassies, in Brussels institutions and at the UN in Geneva to address my case and the cases of other detained activists, and calling for the release, reparations and protection for human rights defenders in Bahrain, and detained activists, including my brother, Salah Al-Khawaja, and a Bahraini-Swedish activist, Mohammed Habib Al-Muqdad.

Finally, I thank you again and send my warm greetings to all Danish citizens.  I hope that the good effort, including yours, would soon secure my release so that  I can join my family and friends and resume my work as the director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) based in Beirut, that has recently started its work.

I wish you all the best.

Yours Sincerely,
Abdulhadi Abdulla Alkhawaja
Bahrain. 8 Feb. 2012

Notes:

1. Would you please submit a copy to my family.
2. I consider this as an “open” letter, so you may feel free to use it as you find convenient.

For updates and information on the situation in Bahrain, please consult the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

The BBC is to issue an apology over its purchase and broadcasting of programmes on Egypt, Malaysia and other topics by a London TV company in the pay, to the tune of millions, to the very clients being featured in the programmes, including Mubarak’s regime, and the Malaysian government.

The revelations, exposed by an Independent investigation last year showed how “the BBC paid nominal fees of as little as £1 for programmes made by FBC Media (UK), whose PR client list included foreign governments and multinational companies.”

In particular:

“The company made eight pieces for the BBC about Malaysia while failing to declare it was paid £17m by the Malaysian government for “global strategic communications”. The programmes included positive coverage of Malaysia’s controversial palm oil industry.

The BBC also used FBC to make a documentary about the spring uprising in Egypt without knowing the firm was paid to do PR work for the regime of former dictator Hosni Mubarak.”

The BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee uncovered 15 breaches of editorial guidelines, as well other breaches of rules on sponsorship in programmes shown by BBC World News.

As the Indy piece reports, the BBC Apology will state:

“A small number of programmes broadcast on BBC World News between February 2009 and July 2011 broke BBC rules aimed at protecting our editorial integrity. These rules ensure that programmes are free, and are seen to be free, from commercial or other outside pressures.”

The story doesn’t just affect Egypt and Malaysia. FBC, the TV company in question, was revealed by the Independent to be

“run by the former Financial Times journalist Alan Friedman and the CNN presenter John Defterios, was also making editorial programmes that featured FBC clients for the global business broadcaster CNBC, which suspended its FBC-made show World Business. Other FBC clients included the governments of Greece and Kazakhstan and companies like Microsoft. FBC also tried to suggest in its promotional literature it had “cultivated” key opinion formers, such as economist Jeffrey Sachs, as “ambassadors”. Sachs totally rejected the claim.”

The Independent‘s article can be read here.