Doctor treating protesters in Baharin. Photo from Al Jazeera English.

One of the uprisings in the Middle East that has failed to garner a lot of attention is the situation in Bahrain. Even though Bahrainis took to the Lulu Roundabout much the same way Egyptians did in Tahrir Square just days after Mubarak’s ouster and before major protests broke out in Libya, the story itself has escaped Western news cycles. The excellent Al Jazeera English documentary on the uprising, Shouting in the Dark, correctly notes that at the outset of the Bahraini protests they “discovered what felt like a secret revolution… No lights, no TV crews, just a people, shouting in the dark.” Not much has changed since those early days of the protests in February. As the world focused on Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, few stories about the troubles in Bahrain made headlines. One of the rare exceptions is the treatment medical personnel have received from the Gulf kingdom for their role in treating protesters harmed by government security forces.

The targeting of medical personnel is not unique to Bahrain but is a serious breach of medical ethics and human rights. In the case of Bahrain, reports of intimidation of medical staff at the state-run Salmaniya Medical Complex emerged within hours of the early morning raid on Lulu. Numerous human rights groups such as Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch have documented intimidation of medical staff through violent attacks and threats, as well as the militarization of hospitals in order to control access to medical treatment.

As the government crackdown continued but protests failed to die down, the continued willingness of medical staff to fulfill their professional duty to provide care to all people regardless of politics increasingly landed those same medical personnel in political trouble themselves. Before long, many of the country’s top doctors and nurses were arrested under charges of trying to topple the monarchy. The trial of 48 medics in front of a military court started in June and ended in with at least 20 of them receiving sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years in prison in September. Although the government agreed a week later to re-try the medics in a civilian court, new charges of weapons by the prosecution in contradiction to the official report by the Bahrain Independent Commission suggests that the new trial may not be any better in terms of fairness and impartiality.

Of course, the plight of the Bahrain medics is only one facet of troubles the kingdom has faced since protests broke out in February. However it is also indicative of why the crackdown in Bahrain has been more upsetting to some observers than other protests movements like Libya and Yemen. As Hani Mowafi for Amnesty International Magazine noted last month:

Although the scale of violence directed at protestors has certainly been greater in other countries in the region, the brutality of the crackdown in Bahrain came as a shock to many who had considered Bahrain to be a glittering hub of commerce along the lines of the Dubai model. The government attempted to justify its actions by portraying the protestors and their supporters as part of an Iran-backed Shi’a movement even though the protests focused on expanded political rights and included some Sunnis. Although we saw no evidence of sectarianism on the part of hospital staff, the government has targeted them and portrayed them as Shi’a-leaning. Amid this increasingly sectarian rhetoric, simply articulating what had happened became an act of tremendous courage. Indeed, while we were there, the doctors, nurses and emergency personnel we interviewed described being harassed, detained and released on various occasions following the initial crackdown, although they did not anticipate the full scale of the persecution to come.

Today, protests continue daily in Bahrain as does the government crackdown. Meanwhile, medics are waiting in prison cells for their trial to resume in January and learn what their fate will be for doing their job in a place where every action now has political consequences.

“Human Security Is The Primary Purpose Of Organizing A State In The Beginning.”
– Surin Pitsuwan, ASEAN

In the wake of the Arab Spring, and in light of the ongoing global economic disorder, world leaders would be well advised to examine their understanding of national security. Recent events paint a picture of national leaders who are wildly out of touch and hopelessly behind the principal national challenge of the 21st century – human security.

(Source: Newsweek)

In 2011, the world witnessed the sudden and total political implosion of a handful of states that up until recently were firmly in the hands of their autocratic rulers. There was much debate about how the warning signs and red flags were missed. Clearly, N. African leaders were out of touch and not able to sense the social fissures and stress points that indicated popular rage.

Though one of the core lessons of the Arab revolts is that super angry citizens now have virtual meeting grounds to vent, meet, organize and to act, the most memorable lesson of the revolts is that governments must provide for the legitimate needs of their people or face ouster. Authorities must quickly learn that protecting their people from state on state conflict or homeland attacks (i.e. Freedom of Fear), must be balanced with the human requirement for the basics, or what social scientists call “Freedom of Want” (think shelter, food, clean water etc.). In most societies, this need is satisfied when people are productively employed in the economy and basic goods/services are made available through a combination of social programs and a healthy private sector. Mubarak, Gadaffi, and other modern day pharaohs simply failed to effectively work with the ‘whole of society’ to deliver on their respective “Freedom of Want” promises.

From Pharaoh to Prisoner (Source: Newsweek)

As we prepare to start a new year, basic food prices across the globe remain at historically high levels and although great strides have been made in the anti-poverty fight, the numbers are still staggering.

• Approximately 9.2 million children under the age of 5 die each year, mostly from preventable diseases. That’s approximately 25,000 children each day.
• 69 million children are out of school around the world, a figure equivalent to the entire primary school-aged population in Europe andNorth America.
• Food prices have risen 83 percent since 2005, disproportionately affecting those in poverty who spend a higher percentage of their income on food.
• Daily disasters. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria—all treatable diseases—claim the lives of over 8,000 people every day in Africa due to lack of access to health care.
• More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day…300 million are children.

(Statistics are from the World Bank and the ONE Campaign)

To make matters worse, the global economic recovery continues to stall with very little sign that industrialized nations have a solid game plan to get the ball closer to the goal line. Sadly, even with this bleak economic reality, developing nations today account for the majority of arms purchases in the world, buying arms supplied mainly by the permanent UN Security Council members—the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China. Yes, I know what you’re thinking.

So while the international community and mainstream media focus their collective attention on containing the nuclear genie, nations that can least provide human security for their people purchase conventional weapons from the countries that claim to want world peace and social development.  Perhaps all should heed a warning from Thomas Jefferson who once said, “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty”.

Presidents and Prime Ministers — Fear And Respect Your People!