Ala'a al-Shehabi - Founding Member, Bahrain Watch HARDtalk

elections. Now it is time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk. Back in 2011, the small Gulf state of Bahrain seem

to be on the brink of two modules change. The ruling Al Khalifa family

faced unprecedented street protests and demands for democratic reform.

Bahrain's security forces cracked down hard. The legal battle lines

between government and opposition were drawn. `` political. 2.5 years

on, has the Bahraini monarchy and the lessons and weathered the storm?

My guest today is Ala'a al`Shehabi, an activist with the campaign group

Bahrain Watch. Is there a middle ground between the state is grow and

web revolution? `` status quo. Ala'a al`Shehabi, welcome to

HARDtalk. When you look at what has happened in Bahrain since every

2011, what is your overriding emotion? It is one of Mr opportunity

to move for and take the country into a new democratic in a row. And

fulfil the aspirations of the majority of the people. So

disappointment, a sense of failure? Not on behalf of the people, but a

sense that the regime has not the light on the currents taking place

across the whole region. `` not capitalised. To move on and to get

rid of a century old, to get over a century worth of struggle for

democratic change. It is denying its own people the opportunity to become

a modern, democratic state. The implication of that is that nothing

has changed in Bahrain. But that is not true, is it? We are not close to

democracy. That is a fact. When you say democracy, you are implying that

your belief is that for Bahrain to achieve the modernisation that you

talk about, there has to be an end to the monarchy, an end to the role

of the Al Khalifas. I am saying there is now a popular protest

movement and their right two strand of thinking within that popular

protest movement. There is a strand that says there is a place for the

ruling family, one that says there is no place. Which strand are you

in? I believe the regime has sown the seeds and set in motion its own

downfall. So you are in the strand which says the family have to go?

When you kill people, you in mortar lies them as martyrs. You have

created a legend of a historical icon. When it uses torrents of tear

gas, it sets the feelings of despair and indignation, when it assumes

that majority of the people are collectively guilty for something,

it uses a policy of collective punishment, which means that

everyone, indiscriminately, is targeted in the country. I believe

it has set in motion the seeds of repression. It creates revolution.

Your view, in the end, that the downfall of the Al Khalifas have to

be R.N. 's positive future, that seems to be what you are saying. ``

Bahrain's. It will involve the end of the ruling real family. If you

took a different view, if you took a view that said the Al Khalifas has

been under enormous pressure, and they have learned some very painful

and difficult lessons, and things have begun to change in Bahrain, you

would not be as negative as you are. They have lost popular faith. There

is complete mistrust with its citizenry. The lack of willingness

to reform is really what is threatening the regime itself. That

is what I am getting too. There have been changes and there have been

reforms. One only has to look at the reaction of the government to the

violence in that period, after February 2011, and the eventual

setting up of the independent enquiry, of the recommendations of

that commission of enquiry, to see that change has happened. There is a

very nice script. It is this pretence. The reality is, the Prime

Minister that has been serving for 42 years continues to be in power.

The King continues to issue a raft of royal decrees that sanction

repression. The reality is that water is still systematic and

continues. The reality is that many top`level officers responsible for

systematic, all the violations that were initially described in the

commission of enquiry's report, continue to be free and enjoy

impunity and protection. You have made some very big claims, not least

of which that you say that torture, continues unabated. You know that

the government in Bahrain absolutely refutes that. We had the Minister of

State of information saying, that is not the way that we do things, we

are a civilised nation. They point out that their right new safeguards

in place if there are complaints of torture, there are now procedures

laid down in Bahraini law, which ensure that those complaints will be

investigated. Again, those are words on paper. The reality is that people

who have just been released from prison, have all described in detail

the torture that has been carried out. Friends of mine who had just

been released from prison describe atrocious reports of the torture.

What about the independent police ombudsman? That's of cameras have

been put in interrogation rooms? Police chiefs came in from the UK,

the United States as well, to ensure that the lessons of 2011 were

learned. Torture continues despite all of the boxes that appeared to

have been ticked. The reality is that portrayal, as a broad

definition, the Torrance of tear gas that police continue to use on a

daily basis, and something that I have been campaigning... Tear gas is

used in many parts of the world and it is rarely described as torture. I

do not know what country imports three times the amount of citizens

it has, the amount of tear gas. It is literally drowning the country in

a cloud of tear gas. For every claim you make, there is a counterargument

that the Bahraini government come out with. They point to

institutional reform. There is a much better beefed up Independent

human rights commission. They point to the ombudsman, the fact that very

recently, the crown prince was given a more senior role inside the

government. Everybody both inside and outside the government regard

him as a key figure in the reform agenda. Tell that to a person who is

sitting in an ICU unit because half of his goal has blown off because he

was shot point`blank with a tear gas canister. People have been denied

medical care. Tell that to a person who was sitting in this very chair a

year ago and found him in a prison cell a month afterwards, for two

years imprisonment. That is not reform by anyone's book. That is a

nice script. I can understand why the government hires PR companies to

make establishments like BBC throw these questions at human rights

activists and political activists. Again, I am not claiming these

things. They are very well documented. Let's consider what is

actually happening on the ground. You are as aware as I am that there

have been serious instances of violence perpetrated against the

security forces and against other figures in the community in the last

few months. Which are alarming. For example, the car bomb that was

exploded outside a Sunni Mosque, in the summer. Two individuals, who

have since been punished with life in prison. There is a security

threat inside Bahrain, and it seems to come from extreme elements within

the anti`government opposition. The government has crushed all it could

outlets for peaceful decent. It has banned protest in the capital. They

have arrested activists. You are in the UK but you go to Bahrain. You

were in Bahrain not long ago. Were you arrested? I do not want this to

be a bad omen, because you asked the same question to the person who was

arrested at the airport when he returned to the country and he has

not been released since. Are you writing off your chances of giving

what you are saying to me, and the condemnation that you are issuing

towards your own government, are you saying that you are writing off your

chances of ring able to return to your own country? That is definitely

a possibility. But I have every right to return to Bahrain and I

will be doing so in the near future. But the risk is great and massive,

and the likelihood is that all activists have put their neck out,

they will get punished, and feel the hand of recrimination in some way.

Travel bans are routine. A wrasse and family, loss of jobs. You can

follow in your car. `` harassment. These are routine methods that the

regime uses. Are you not in danger of exaggerating what the Bahraini

government is doing? For example, the long`standing opposition

movement inside the country is not banned from holding protest. It has

its own offices, it has its own organisation, membership. It is

allowed to operate. But what the government describes as dangerous,

and terrorist, is that extreme element, they loosely call a part of

the feathery 14th movement, which has moved beyond peaceful protest

and appears to be intent, through the use of Molotov `` Molotov

cocktails, car bombs, other weapons, intent on using violence

against the government. I do not know what terrorist group rings

people out on the streets in their thousands on a daily basis. They

have projected very clear`sighted demands. That is for an accountable

and democratically representative government. In terms of these claims

of violence and so on, it is the violent oppression that people

face, one person was arrested and kept in jail, the assistant

president. The number one, he was also interrogated for having

something as simple as an exhibition in their offices. They are

continually facing the threat of being shut down, being ignored. Let

me pin you down on the February 14 movement, and this idea of extremism

taking root and direct violent action becoming more prevalent on

the fringes. Just be clear about your own family. Your father, who is

a long`time exile from Bahrain, Malcolm big dip in absentia, to a

life term for overthrowing the government. `` now conflict did. He

is closely associated with the February 14 movement. It is a

movement. It has now `` not assigned a leadership. It is about an idea.

Again, if one is to tease out the validity or otherwise of the

government's claims, to fully understand the alliances that work

within the Bahraini opposition. The government, and I am now quoting

from the Gulf daily News, which is a very loyal, I am fair to say, sort

of ally of the Bahraini government, it has identified your father as a

key linchpin in the feathery 14th movement. It says that he is a

co`ordinator with Iran, one of the most important foreign organisers of

the group. Is that true? This is a state`run newspaper. The government

has spent 30 million on 18 p are companies. `` PR. They have tried to

influence the narrative and tried to connect opposition with Iranian

agents. What about the allegation that he

has been a co`ordinator with the run and in the past has had a close

association with the opposition and the run. And with the reigning

government. `` Irani government. The government enquiry has found there

has been only involvement between the Irani government and the

opposition. What Maggie did talk about the money spot by the Bahraini

government on smear and PR. I have heard that before, it is important

to get the truth of what people are very senior in the opposition

movement in Bahrain and outside Bahrain really think and really won.

Take another example, Ayatollah who was seen as a spiritual leader that

is very important, you can go through his record and look at a

whole host of quotes where he delivers praise to the Irani

revolution and he said that AyatollahKhomeini's revolution

transcended the country. Is that rhetoric increasingly part of the

dialogue in the opposition. It has been today the most peaceful and

straight forward movement. White the movement can evolve over time. And

there is deep frustration that as you have characterised it, change

has not come. I am wondering whether the sort of ideology and philosophy

that I have just outlined to you" is now becoming more dominant in the

opposition. There is a fear of change that if a democracy was in

Bahrain, these changing forces from around will come and take over.

Iran. We should be asking for a civil democratic state where

people, where there is a system built unsystematic discrimination,

structural criminality, the infrastructure's has been removed

and dismantled and a civilised state is enacted to bring the Bahrainis

back to the modern era. There was a pseudo` apart so `` apartheid

state. The ruling family controls 40% of the most senior positions in

the political system. They are reinventing themselves in those

decisions of power. That is not the same thing as talking about

apartheid. I come back to this point about the ideology of the opposition

that there is an increasing sectarianism about the language

coming from key figures in the opposition. This is no longer being

characterised as a unified movement of Bahrainis to many greater freedom

and different form of government, it seems to me that you use the word

apartheid that is being characterised now is a fundamental

sectarian face`off. There is an attempt to make it feel like that.

You use the word apartheid. The government has entrenched and

apartheid system based on a sectarian system where the Shia are

disenfranchised from any decision`making in the country. They

have been marginalised, unemployment is very high a month that

population. In every level, from getting a building permit to

obtaining government contracts, there is an unset or that if you are

a Shia you are removed and not considered. You are a noncitizen or

some citizen. Members of the ruling party enjoy the privilege and have

squandered the wealth and have a third of the wealth over the last

century and that has gone to the ruling family. These are key

questions of inequality that exist today. That needs to be rectified

through a fundamental change in the current system. As you outline,

everything fundamental that you say needs to change in Bahrain. That

word that he used before, revolution, revolutions and we have

seen in the Arab world over the last few years. They tend to lead to

violence, chaos and in this `` instability. The message is not from

just the Bahraini government but from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere is

that to avoid dangerous chaos and instability, there must be a

dialogue and the government has tried to proceed with a dialogue

with the opposition, they have tried to establish it going back to

February this year. Currently, the opposition don't want to talk about

it. Will that change? Having you talk if the president calls his

political opposition leaders and put them in jail. How can you have a

think tank. They have released one and they say they want a novel one

who is a major player in the opposition movement, I want him to

be at the table, he is saying we want to be at the table. For the

Bahrainis to find a way out of the crisis, dialogue has to happen.

Clearly not a self`assured monologue as it has been described recently.

This is an attempt to distort, delay and divert the need for change in

the country. Democratic transition and reform can take place almost

instantly. This dialogue, the demands are very clear, they are not

negotiable. I asked you about the movement at the beginning because I

`` the mood at the beginning because I was wondering about how depressed

you may be. . The UK sent a minister to Bahrain to talk about the close

ties with that country to praise some of the progress that has

happened. And to initiate a new round of cultural and trade

exchanges. Whenever you say, it doesn't appear that the

international community wants to see anything other than the colleagues

is in power involved in some sort of process. That is what the outside

world one. Specifically the British. They have been the backbone of the

family for the past two centuries. You don't think that Barack Obama is

dying to see instability there? Everybody would like an orderly

reforming these Arab countries. They are so fossilised and brittle that

they are incapable of bringing that reform themselves. The king promised

in 2001 a constitution in which she received 19 .4% unanimous vote `` 98

.4%. He amended the constitution and brought in a new constitution a year

later, he missed out on the chance to reform himself into really move

the country forward. Again, scripted reform sounds very good on paper. It

has taken a century to deliver and we still don't see the effects and

the promise is taking place in the country. Bahrain Watch has tried to

document it and to keep tabs on the government. The reality is

completely different. The role of the US... We are almost out of time,

to sum up, it sounds to me that you are saying that is only one way out

of this for Bahrain and that is revolution. Violent revolution. Is

that what you are saying? Revolution isn't necessarily, it is a state of

mind, it is about people refusing to being dominated by the moniker the.

`` monarchy. We know from the Arab world, revolution, tends to lead to

violence in the Middle East. Is that what you want for the future? It is

the regime that has been using the well`documented violence, torrents

of tear gas, 2 million canisters of tear gas coming from South Korea and

we are campaigning against that, it is leading to the death in blood. We

have two end there. Thing`macro we think it very much.