Press TV
A former British ambassador has shed light on the British media’s hypocrisy in covering the anti-regime protests in Bahrain as recent reports tell of Britain’s role in suppressing Bahraini protesters.
Craig Murray, a human rights activist and former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, has lashed out at the state-funded BBC for its coverage of the Bahraini regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters. “The Shiite majority does suffer discrimination, but the rest of the population is getting fed up with the continual disruption and demonstrations,” Murray quoted the BBC’s Frank Gardner as saying while he described the Bahraini regime forces’ crackdown on protesters.
Murray also made a comparison between the British media’s coverage of Bahraini people’s revolution and the way the western media covered the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The two descriptions contained identical words while the words “black majority” were used instead of “Shiite majority” in the report quoted by Murray which described the way western media covered the anti-apartheid movement.
This comes as recent reports have shed more light on the role Britain plays in the brutal crackdown on the Bahraini people. As the Bahraini people took to the streets to mark the anniversary of the dawn of their revolution, Bahraini regime’s forces employed weapons and tactics which were imported from the UK.
Britain’s former Metropolitan police assistant commissioner John Yates, who was forced to resign following the phone-hacking scandal, popped up in Bahrain to help the regime oversee “police reforms.”
However, the reforms seem to be the use of tear gas and stun grenades and the introduction of “kettling” tactics to the Bahraini regime’s security forces. Bahrain’s “police reforms” overseen by Britain is not restricted to tactics. Official figures revealed that the British government sold over £1m worth of rifles and military equipment to the Bahraini regime from July to September last year.
