(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - A number of Bahraini doctors are scheduled to stand trial in a military court for treating anti-government protesters, despite international pressure on Bahrain to stop the violent crackdown on the demonstrators.
This is the interview with Professor Rodney Shakespeare, the chairman of the Committee against Torture in Bahrain, in London, regarding the government's image over the latest development.
Q: We have got news that a powerful US-based labor union has essentially told the Us government to cancel a five-year free trade pact with Bahrain. Is that important in any way, although the article itself admits that it would carry symbolic importance to Bahrain? Do you believe any such calls by unions will reap any rewards?
Shakespeare: That is a good sign. In its self it may not seem much. But what it means is that humans in organizations are starting to press in what is this disgraceful situation. We've just learnt that the Saudi sadist and the [al-] Khalifa killers are putting criminal charges against 47 doctors and nurses for aiding people who have been wounded. Now every medical person takes the Hippocratic Oath, or a version of the oath, or the oath is embodied in some form in their ethics and training, it basically says that they will help all injured people or sick people and they will do no harm.
And every decent person faces someone who is injured, tries to help in some way. It is a good humane instinct. But the Saudis sadist and the [al-] Khalifa killers have shown that they are sub-human, and they flatted all decent human instinct, by daring to charge people just for helping the wounded. Now I say to everybody, contact your organizations. Just as that labor organization is now trying to do something. Contact you organizations, and in particular contact your medical organizations, contact your doctor, contact your nurse, contact you hospitals, contact your governments, contact your foreign ministers. Do it by letter, by telephone, or what is open to anybody today, do it by the internet.
Because it is only when the organizations is this union giving a lead... that the organizations take action that we will shame these disgusting perverts. I mean there are bodies of scum wobbling down the road. They thing they can go shopping in London or Paris and still be thought of as human beings, they're wrong. They are sub-human. You do not ever stop people from trying to help the wounded. So, [a] thank you to that labor organization and to everybody listening to this program. Do your bit now. Do not just sit back and be horrified by this sub-human act, take action!
Q: An online news paper that's actually run from the UK itself calling itself “the Socialist Worker Online” has reported the Bahraini citizens who are living in the UK, are set to actually take a case of war crimes to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Thursday this week. They're going to put forward that case. Of course these are citizens who are in fact been told by the Bahraini government to return back to Bahrain for unknown reasons.
Now, do you think them taking this case to the ICC, does that again show that days are numbered of the Bahraini monarchy?
Shakespeare: This is splendid action being taken, and be assured that right the way around the world in due course action will be taken legally in any legal avenue possible. People will take it as this cases being taken. And at the same time, increasingly, political action is going to be taken as well. But as Zayd al-Isa, who [is] so splendidly accurate in everything that he says, as he is pointing out behind this are the Americans, I think the Americans ordered the crackdown, but now it's totally outrages, and the question is, what it this country, the UK and Europe going to do about it?
We have had Catherin Ashton of Europe saying words that they are killing, executing, four people who were just exercising their rightful protest. But when is Europe actually going to stand up and show some guts and fight this matter?
As for the USA, I wanted to point out something, that the USA and the UK have betrayed democracy. They have done it completely and fundamentally. They've done it deliberately and openly, but having done that, there comes a point where the basic decent people within the foreign office, and there are some [which] most are giggling idiots, but there are some and in the state department, and those decent people, they suddenly start to say well we've betrayed democracy, why should that we turn around and betray the Saudi sadists and [al-] Khalifa killers, Because they are sub human?
So I say to those killers and to those people who are daring to put criminal charges against doctors and who are daring to execute young men who were just protesting in the streets, I say you go to sleep tonight sniggering and complacent, sure that you've done a good works killing and torturing, but the day may yet come when you wake up in the morning and suddenly find that those you thought were your friends, the USA , the UK, and Europe, have suddenly turned around and betrayed you. And it will be a good thing to, because you no longer have any human virility in this world. You are scum, all of you, and people are waking up to it. I congratulate the American unions, I mean the... it is the AFL-CIO [America's Union Movement] something like that. It is the major American labor organization, and they represent the organized force of the American politics.
And at some stage, all the corruption government of the USA and UK government and Europe is going to be revealed. And we're going to get these killers, and we are going to get these torturers and I say to the Socialist Workers Party I say go for it in Europe, I wish you support, we'll all be behind you, we will get these people in due course.
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