(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The incident took place as thousands of Bahraini protesters were holding an anti-regime demonstration outside Salman's house. The exact date of the incident, however, has not been announced.
Al-Wefaq has organized many anti-government demonstrations in Bahrain since the beginning of the revolution in February 2011.
Interview with Jamal Wakim, a professor at the Lebanese International University, to further discuss the issue. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Q: How much of an escalation is it that Bahraini forces, backed by the Saudis, have raided Sheikh Ali Salman's house? Is that not going to further instigate protests instead of suppressing them?
Wakim: Actually, the Bahrainis and the Saudis are using the fact that all attention is drawn into Syria and the Syrian crisis in order for them to crackdown on the protests in Bahrain without being checked by public opinion throughout the world.
That is why they are using this opportunity to mount their pressure on the leadership of the Bahraini opposition in order to calm down things in this country; especially the Bahraini opposition is having no support whatsoever from foreign support the way, for example, the Syrian resistance or the Syrian opposition is getting from the West.
So we need to relate things in Bahrain to what is going on in Syria and I believe that the Bahraini government will keep on going with this process but I do not believe that it will calm down the opposition.
I think that it will instigate further opposition to mount to this regime.
Q: As you said, the crackdown in Bahrain does continue, in some cases children as young as 11 are being arrested. Why are the propagators of human rights silent on that?
Wakim: Other than a few independent human rights organizations who have credibility, who have objectivity and who have been tackling things in Bahrain and in other areas in the Arab world from a professional point of view, but most NGOs in the world are either financed or supported by Western countries mainly by the US aid which is related to the NSC, the American National Security Council.
So they are drawn by the policy set by the United States and as far as it concerns the Bahraini opposition, the Americans are concerned to enforce stability in the [Persian] Gulf region.
They are not concerned about democracy nor human rights and that is why all NGOs that are related to or financed by the US aid and the NSC are not concerned about what is going on in Bahrain.
They are focusing on Syria. This is what we call a humanitarian intervention that is promoted by [Bernard ] Kushner, the former minister of foreign affairs in France, or by Tony Blair and by other hypocrites including the former vice president of the United States, Al Gore.
So we need to see these things from this perspective but there are few NGOs, humanitarian organizations that are concerned about the situation in Bahrain, however, their voice is not broadcast on Western media.
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source : PressTV
Tuesday
12 June 2012
6:26:00 AM
321605
Bahraini regime forces have raided the house of Sheikh Ali Salman, the leader of the country's main opposition group, al-Wefaq, in a village near the capital, Manama.