West’s damning silence over Bahrain
Bahrain’s despotic Al Khalifa rulers have gone into a huff over US President Barack Obama’s comparison of the Persian Gulf island state with Syria.
In his address to the UN General Assembly last week, Obama made vague mention of sectarianism in Syria and Bahrain in the same sentence.
The funny thing is that the Bahraini dictatorship is right in a way, but for all the wrong reasons. Bahrain is nothing like Syria.
That’s because Bahrain represents a genuine case of a peaceful pro-democracy movement being crushed by a despised tyrant. That’s the narrative that the Western governments and their propaganda mainstream media apply erroneously to Syria; but when it comes to Bahrain, where the narrative is truly applicable, the West turns a blind eye and develops a curious speech impediment.
Obama probably felt obliged to make some mention of Bahrain in his UN address only because the human rights situation there is so dire, for him not to throw a few token words of concern would have left him open to derision, especially since the US Navy Fifth Fleet is stationed there and Washington plies the regime with millions of dollars worth of weaponry and commerce.
Nevertheless, the US president’s contemptibly few words on Bahrain, betray a disgraceful complicity of silence by Washington and the West generally towards the Khalifa regime’s crimes against its long-suffering people.