(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Shabbir Hassanally, a London-based activist and Muslim scholar, says that the Manama regime does not want a peaceful solution to the political conflict in Bahrain because the Al Khalifah dynasty only knows the language of force, Presstv rerorted.
As Al Khalifah continues to kill, arrest, revoke people’s citizenships, all it’s doing is closing that door to negotiation and ultimately killing itself, he noted, adding, “The only language they know is the language of force.
“The Al Khalifah regime in Bahrain and the Al Saud regime in Saudi [Arabia] are moving in that direction [of turning peaceful protests into civil war] very quickly without realizing that they’re actually coming very quickly towards the end of their [rule] which will end up in their demise,” he warned.
The ruling family, he added, in Manama has no ideological or solid basis, because “Bahrain is run by a family which is not even from Bahrain.”
The analyst further criticized the United Kingdom and the United States for their role in preserving despotic regimes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Britain is assisting the Manama regime to suppress Bahraini protestors, because the UK thinks it is still an empire, Hassanally argued.
The British do not want to lose their under-construction military base in Bahrain and the Americans do not want to lose their existing military base there; thus, they are “appeasing” the Manama regime, he concluded.
Since February 14, 2011, thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis, calling on the al-Khalifa rulers to relinquish power.
In March that year, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, themselves repressive Arab regimes, were deployed to the country to assist Manama in its crackdown on protests. Hundreds of Bahraini activists have been imprisoned and suppressed.
On June 20, Bahraini authorities stripped Sheikh Qassim of his citizenship, less than a week after suspending the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the country’s main opposition bloc, and dissolving the Islamic Enlightenment Institution founded by Qassim, and the opposition al-Risala Islamic Association.
Over the past few weeks, demonstrators have held sit-in protests outside Sheikh Qassim’s home to denounce his citizenship removal.
Bahrain has also sentenced Sheikh Ali Salman, another revered opposition cleric, to nine years in prison on charges of seeking regime change and collaborating with foreign powers, which he has denied.
Sheikh Salman was the secretary general of the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, which was Bahrain’s main opposition bloc before being dissolved by the regime.
Things actually seem to be getting worse. The country’s only remotely critical newspaper, Al Wasat, which was shut down in 2011, has now been ordered by the government to close its online edition too after criticizing the executions.
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