http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55409
WASHINGTON, Apr 27, 2011 (IPS) - As the savage crackdown on the majority Shiite opposition movement drags on in Bahrain, has moved from launching outright assaults on peaceful protestors on the streets of Manama in broad daylight into the murky waters of what experts are calling state terror, featuring all the old tactics of petrifying a population into submission.
Midnight knocks on doors, unmarked vehicles whisking activists away in the dead of night and relentless suppression of the media are fast pushing Bahrain into an abyss of impunity, critics here say.
"What we are seeing in [Bahrain] today is like what the United States saw in the 1950s under McCarthyism," Dr. Muneera Fakhro, a leader of the left-leaning Wa'ad party, told a gathering of activists, reporters and policy heads at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington Tuesday.
Speaking via live teleconference from Bahrain, Fakhro, whose house has been attacked twice since the unrest began, mourned the loss of 30 lives, the nearly 500 Bahrainis behind bars, and the scores of people still missing.
"We need to stop such atrocities with the help of international organisations immediately," she said.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55409
WASHINGTON, Apr 27, 2011 (IPS) - As the savage crackdown on the majority Shiite opposition movement drags on in Bahrain, has moved from launching outright assaults on peaceful protestors on the streets of Manama in broad daylight into the murky waters of what experts are calling state terror, featuring all the old tactics of petrifying a population into submission.
Midnight knocks on doors, unmarked vehicles whisking activists away in the dead of night and relentless suppression of the media are fast pushing Bahrain into an abyss of impunity, critics here say.
"What we are seeing in [Bahrain] today is like what the United States saw in the 1950s under McCarthyism," Dr. Muneera Fakhro, a leader of the left-leaning Wa'ad party, told a gathering of activists, reporters and policy heads at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington Tuesday.
Speaking via live teleconference from Bahrain, Fakhro, whose house has been attacked twice since the unrest began, mourned the loss of 30 lives, the nearly 500 Bahrainis behind bars, and the scores of people still missing.
"We need to stop such atrocities with the help of international organisations immediately," she said.