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All right, now our first guest on the show today is Jen Marlow.
She's an author, documentary filmmaker, and human rights activist.
She's the author, co-author with Sami Al-Jundi of The Hour of Sunlight, one Palestinian's journey from prisoner to peacemaker.
And her most recent film is One Family in Gaza.
And now she's got this brand new one at TomDispatch.com, The Secret Revolution That Could Set the Middle East Aflame.
Welcome to the show, Jen.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
And now you guys know how TomDispatch does it.
He's always got a little, well, almost always has a little introductory essay at the top.
And so there's always two titles, The Secret Revolution and Terror and Tear Gas on the Streets of Bahrain.
The revolution will not be televised in the U.S. at least.
Now, you were in Bahrain as part of the Witness Bahrain Initiative.
So first of all, tell us, what is that?
The Witness Bahrain Initiative was started by a group of U.S. citizens who were observing from afar what was happening in Bahrain, the pro-democracy uprising and the repression that it was receiving at the hands of the Bahraini government.
And they were also realizing with some consternation that the uprising and the resulting repression was largely being ignored by Western media, particularly U.S. media.
And they thought that they had an opportunity to do something about that and to be able to go into Bahrain as international activists, human rights workers, journalists, and be able to be eyes and ears and report on what was happening and what they were seeing.
So the first group of activists from Witness Bahrain went in February 2012, which was timed with the one-year anniversary of Bahrain's pro-democracy uprising, which began on February 14, 2011, or at least this phase of Bahrain's pro-democracy uprising.
Bahrainis have been demanding democracy for decades for this particular phase of it.
And so the first one in February, and they were all eventually deported within that first week.
And then after that, more of us have trickled in slowly over the ensuing months.
So I was the most recent activist with Witness Bahrain.
All right.
Now, I didn't necessarily want to start with this in this part of the interview, but I got my footnote wrong earlier.
So I want to just go ahead and set the record straight here real quick.
It was Admiral Mike Mullen.
I think I said Dennis Blair.
It was Admiral Mike Mullen who explained about a year and a half ago on Meet the Press when asked, what's the difference between Libya, where we're intervening on the side of the rebels, and Bahrain, where we're not?
And leave it at that.
And Admiral Mullen said very honestly, because he couldn't think of any lie to tell, I guess, that, well, because Bahrain's our ally.
And so really all their talk about human rights is, as he admits there, so much smokescreen.
If the U.S. Navy wants a base in Bahrain, then the last thing they're going to do is support a popular government there.
They're going to support the government that supports them.
Simple as that.
Absolutely.
And that's not only true in the example of Bahrain.
I think we can look all over the world at what U.S. foreign policy is.
And under the rubric of human rights or supporting democracy or things like that, the U.S. ends up supporting whatever they think is in their strategic interest.
However, any particular administration defines that.
So that's no different in Bahrain.
The Bahraini government is considered a close ally by the U.S. government.
So regardless of its human rights record, regardless of all the other things I would hope would be criteria for who the U.S. government considers allies, they consider them their partners.
And so they are going to support them.
And now, Jen, I think, you know, I probably should have said this in the very beginning here.
For people who aren't really familiar, and why should they be unless, you know, they're a student of the American empire?
It's really none of their business.
It's not the kind of information they come across very often.
But Bahrain, what is it?
Where is it?
This this little nation?
Bahrain is a small island country.
It's actually an archipelago of, I believe, 33 different small islands right off of the in the Persian Gulf.
And it's right off of the shore with Saudi Arabia.
And actually, recently, in recent years, there's been a land bridge built from Bahrain to Saudi.
So it's a very small Gulf monarchy.
It's also, I guess, important, although I don't want to overstate this, because I've read some contradictory things along these lines, too, that say, you know, slow down there, round eye and don't make too much of a big deal out of this.
But it is correct.
A what, 20 or 30 percent Sunni minority kingdom dictatorship ruling class.
And then the 70 percent are Shiites and have not.
Well, I think those percentages are a bit exaggerated.
The figures and there is no exact census of these figures, but the figures that I get are that the Shia population is more around 35 to 40 percent.
I mean, excuse me, the Sunni population is more 35 to 40 percent and the Shia population is more like, you know, 60 to 65 percent somewhere.
That math doesn't quite work out, but but a little less extreme than what you said.
But one distinction I want to make is that, yes, it is a Sunni run monarchy and a Shia majority population.
But the Sunni monarchy doesn't necessarily represent the Sunni population.
So I don't want to use language that automatically aligns the entire Sunni minority with the Sunni monarchy.
Right.
Or the Shiite majority against most of that, the majority of that Sunni minority.
Right.
When they don't necessarily have anything to fight about.
Exactly true.
And most of the activists, most of the opposition activists that I have spent time with, were very clear to make this distinction that this was not a Shia versus Sunni uprising.
They were not against any Sunni Bahraini, that they were fighting for democracy and for equal rights.
And that the rights they were fighting for were for all Bahraini citizens, Shia or Sunni.
And that they were against the regime and they were against the oppression and the repression at the hands of the regime.
But they were not against their fellow Sunni Bahrainis.
And in fact, there are Sunni Bahraini opposition activists that are struggling right alongside the Shia activists.
It is a small number.
And the regime has very successfully spun the revolution as a sectarian uprising.
And in the regime's propaganda, they have created a lot of fear, which a lot of the Sunni Bahrainis hold now.
The fear that it is a sectarian uprising, that the Shia are trying to come and take their houses and take their jobs and take over the country.
So that fear exists.
The sectarian tensions do exist because of that.
But the root of the uprising, and this point was made to me by Shia and Sunni activists alike, that the root of the uprising was not Shia versus Sunnis.
It was Shia demanding equal rights with their Sunni country people, with their fellow citizens.
The battle was for equal rights and democracy.
Well, and not only that, but when the whole thing started, I guess, February or March before last, 2011 there, they started out saying, hey, look, could we please just have the slightest semblance of a rule of law?
They weren't trying to overthrow the regime at all.
They were saying, let's have a constitutional monarchy where we write a document that says that your illegitimate kingdom is legitimate.
We just want a lawyer.
We want the basic right to challenge accusations against us or whatever when your cops come for us.
That kind of thing.
And it was only after the harsh clampdown that then the protesters escalated their demands to they want real freedom.
Absolutely.
And there are so many protesters who are calling for constitutional monarchy.
But you're absolutely right.
In the beginning of the uprising, the dominant demand that most people on the streets were calling for was a constitutional monarchy, was replacing the prime minister who's been in his position for 42 years with an elected prime minister, was having a real justice system, like you pointed out, and rule of law.
And and as the uprising continued and as the crackdown intensified, then the demands, as you noted, increased and now much more common is the demand to overthrow the monarchy altogether.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, because they figured rightly that if they went so far as to say, you know, we want a real rule of law and no king, that that would provoke violence out of the state immediately.
So they weren't trying to go that far, but they ended up provoking them anyway with any demands at all.
The government just reminds me, too, it's been so long since we really covered Bahrain on the show, to my shame.
But I remember, too, the New York Times trying so hard to spin it where the head of the secret police is Mr.
Reasonable, moderate guy that maybe we can work with.
And he keeps trying to tell the king to not be so harsh when meanwhile.
And I forget the guy's name, Khalifa, something or other.
And but meanwhile, he's the one who's torturing all the doctors for daring to treat a wounded protester.
Well, yeah.
And actually, that's interesting that you mentioned the case of the doctors, because there's been a little bit of news in that just recently, which is that is a handful of police who are now being charged for torturing those doctors.
I think I'm not sure I have to check on the exact number, but I think maybe seven interrogators are being charged.
Police interrogators are actually being charged by the regime for torture.
And what's not clear, I have to kind of scrub down on this a little deeper to see is, is this an indication?
Is this a step toward the goodwill?
Is this an indication that that the regime is willing to try to start taking some responsibility?
Or is this, you know, is this a window dressing?
And are they trying to just, you know, hang a few people out to dry in order to give the appearance of accountability and the appearance of reform?
Whereas in reality, there is no reform.
So there's many indications that I've seen in the past weeks that show not only is there no intention of reform, but that things are moving in a reverse direction.
So the announcement, this announcement, which I believe came yesterday about about the charging of people who torture the doctors.
I need to examine a little closer what that might be signaling.
Yeah, maybe just a PR stunt.
Well, if anything.
Yeah, it might be a PR stunt, but I you know, but I want to hold out hope that maybe maybe it's something more meaningful than that.
I don't I'm not optimistic that it is, but I don't want to dismiss that possibility.
Sure.
Well, and if anything, even if it is a PR stunt, maybe some of the cops will be a little bit more hesitant to deploy some of this force if they don't think that the monarchy will stand behind them.
If they might just get thrown under the bus, then maybe they won't, you know, try so hard.
Right.
Think twice about blindly following those kinds of orders, perhaps.
Yeah.
Again, you know, I'm just looking for a silver lining, too.
All right.
So now please tell us all about Jihan Kazerouni.
Jihan Kazerouni is among the more phenomenal human beings that I have had the honor of meeting.
I met her on maybe my second or third day in Bahrain.
And then shortly thereafter that she was taking me around and taking me with her to all the different protests.
She was attending to meet the different activists that she was working with, all the different aspects of her work.
She was taking me with her.
Jihan did not start out as an activist.
Jihan started out actually as being pro government and she was an investment banker.
She was living a very privileged life.
She would admit that readily.
When the demonstrations first erupted in February 2011, she did not take part in them initially.
She didn't know what people were making such a fuss about.
She thought the government was quite good.
And she believed the government propaganda that she was watching on the state TV.
And it wasn't until she got some text messages on her phone one day in the middle of March.
And the text messages were appeals asking for people to join them in the pro roundabout.
Which was the site of the demonstrations in that initial month.
And the appeals were saying that we're being attacked by the government and asking people to come and stand with them.
And more out of curiosity than anything else, Jihan decided to go and see for herself what was really going on.
And what she saw completely shocked her.
Because what she had understood from the state media was that the government was not using force against protesters.
That they were using maximum restraint and only using force.
So maybe some tear gas if they needed to disperse demonstrators.
And she heard that the demonstrators in fact were the ones that were armed and had weapons and were attacking.
And what she saw of course was the opposite.
She saw unarmed nonviolent protesters chanting again for democracy, for equal rights.
And she saw government police shooting directly into the crowd.
Birdshot, live ammunition, tear gas canisters aimed straight at the crowd.
She saw bodies being loaded into cars.
And she was a little far away from those cars so she couldn't tell from that distance whether she was seeing corpses of people who had been killed.
Or people who were injured.
And then she went next to Thalmania Hospital, the main government hospital.
And she saw those same bodies that she now learned were people who were injured.
Many of them overcome with tear gas or injured by birdshot.
Being laid out on white sheets that were spread out on the parking lot of the hospital.
Why lying on white sheets in the parking lot was because the hospital itself was overflowing.
All the beds were filled.
There were so many injuries.
And what she saw that day and what she witnessed that day and then what she witnessed in the days that followed really transformed her.
And she made a decision at one point that she couldn't just continue on with life as normal.
She couldn't keep going back to her office as an investment banker and spending the weekends shopping in Bahrain's high-end malls.
She needed to do something about what she was seeing.
So she went to Nabila Rajab, who is the co-founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.
And she said, I want to get involved.
What can I do?
And from that point on, everything changed for Jehan.
And she has been committing her entire life, day and night, every waking hour, to this struggle for equal rights and for freedom.
And helping the people who have been the most hurt and the most vulnerable during the struggle.
All right.
And tell us a little bit about your time that you spent with her and what you saw there.
I spent about three weeks with Jehan.
And in those three weeks, I went all over the country with her.
We interviewed released prisoners, people who had just gotten out of prison.
And in one case, we interviewed a woman who was a university student.
She had just gotten out of prison an hour before that, where she had been sexually harassed.
And we met with an 11-year-old boy who had been in prison for one month under charges of blocking the street.
So we met with all sorts of people.
We saw nurses who were stitching up injured children.
Children who had their heads split open by tear gas canisters at demonstrations.
These parents were afraid to take them to the hospital, because if they got taken to the hospital, they faced being arrested for having been at a protest.
And we saw nurses in these underground clinics risking themselves being arrested and risking themselves being tortured.
Stitching up these children's heads in secret, without anesthesia, with only very primitive instruments.
Again, with this desire to all try to help each other.
The level of solidarity was phenomenal.
I mentioned a few minutes ago Nabil Rajab, who is the co-founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.
I was in Nabil's home the day the police came and brought him to prison.
He had been arrested, initially sentenced to three months in prison, because of a tweet that he wrote.
He wrote a tweet that they said insulted the Prime Minister, and so he was given three months in jail.
While he was in jail, that sentence was increased to three years, because of another pending charge against him, which was calling for illegal gatherings, which of course is a way of saying calling to protest.
Which of course should be a guaranteed human right, the ability to peaceful assembly.
So I was in Nabil's house, and I actually filmed the arrest.
I was hiding in his house when they came and took him away, and was able to do the final interview with him, before he went to prison, and then filmed the arrest itself.
Jehan and I went to villages late at night, where some of the youth activists were, again, risking arrest by going out on the street and painting their bus stops in the colors of the Bahraini flag.
An act like that, which might be seen as just patriotic in any other country, was considered an act of rebellion in Bahrain, and those youth risked arrest.
So Jehan took me everywhere with her, and met people working in every aspect of the uprising.
Alright, now on some kind of bigger political level type questions here.
We've seen the Obama administration continue to ship weapons there, and of course continue to station the Fifth Fleet there, and obviously continue to support the kingdom.
But I wonder if you think Obama could stop this policy with a phone call, if he got on the phone with the king and said, hey listen, you've got to quit your clamp down, and stop jailing people for peaceful assembly, and this kind of thing.
Is not the king of Bahrain simply an American sock puppet, and does the president not have the power to tell him to do whatever he wants, even if it comes down to just, you know, do a headstand or whatever?
You know, I'm not going to pretend that I know the inner workings enough to be able to say that, you know, if the president picked up the phone, then for sure this would be the consequence.
What I can say, and what I do believe is true, is that the U.S. administration could do far more to pressure the government of Bahrain and the monarchy of Bahrain to implement true reforms.
The U.S. administration could do far more to make sure that human rights defenders like Nabil Rajab, like the other co-founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Abdul Qadir al-Khawaja, who faces a life sentence in prison and has been severely tortured, to make sure that these men and other activists and opposition activists and human rights defenders are released.
Things like the weapon sales that you referenced absolutely could be used as leverage in order to try to encourage and push the Bahraini regime toward real meaningful reform and real meaningful implementation of reform plans that actually have been drafted.
So, it's unconscionable to me that there are, you know, sometimes statements of protest made by the State Department.
Victoria Luland in the State Department has made, you know, a couple nice-sounding statements expressing concern about the arrest of Nabil Rajab and about other human rights violations, but there's far more than statements of concerns that need to be done.
And then I also wonder, I mean, because you're right, they could, something like the weapon sales is such easy leverage, if they wanted to use it.
And part of me wonders why they don't want to use it at least a little bit, if only for public relations purposes.
But then I wonder if it has something to do with all this talk again of the Sunni-Shia split and in the larger sense that same split, the Saudi-Iranian proxy war.
Now, I don't know and I'm not trying to say I believe any, you know, war party reports that Iran is behind the rebellion there or any of that kind of thing, but certainly the Saudis seem to look at the situation in Bahrain as though all of those Shiites might as well be Iranians.
And certainly that has something to do with why they clamped down so quickly there, right, sending all their troops to help the king.
I think that fear absolutely is a part of it.
But certainly the idea that the uprising is backed by or funded by Iran is certainly a part of the propaganda that the Bahraini regime has put forward.
Although it's interesting and it needs to be noted that the Bahraini king himself, King Hamad, instituted a commission.
It's called the Basiyouni Report because that was the head of the commission.
And it was an independent commission appointed by the king.
And one of the findings of this commission was that there was absolutely no connection to Iran, that the Bahraini uprising had no connection, was not being funded, was not being supported by any outside influence, including Iran.
That being said, I think the fear of Iranian influence is still very much there and that in some ways Iran is a battleground or is perceived as a battleground for influence between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And, of course, in the Saudi-Iran struggle, the U.S. is allies of the Saudi regime.
And so I think Saudi plays a big part in how the U.S. responds to Bahrain, not only because of its relationship with Bahrain, and also because of the Saudis' relationship with Bahrain.
All right, everybody, that is Jen Marlow.
She's an author, documentary filmmaker, and human rights activist.
Her latest book is The Hour of Sunlight, co-written with Sami al-Juni.
And her most recent film is called One Family in Gaza.
Check out her latest piece on Bahrain at TomDispatch.com.
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