PressTV
A protester overcome by tear gas is ferried away as Bahraini police fired tear gas at protesters in Pearl Square, the epicenter of anti-government protests, on March 13, 2011, in Manama.
Saudi Arabia's deadly crackdown against Bahrain's people is aimed at intimidating the Saudi people, because the Arab kingdom is afraid of even a “wisp of democracy,” an expert says.
Saudi authorities are helping Bahrain to quell the anti-government protests there because they are “sacred of its own people rising in protest,” Rodney Shakespeare, chairman of the London-based Committee against Torture in Bahrain, told Press TV in an interview.
“If there were free elections in Saudi Arabia, 99 percent of the people would vote against the regime and that is why they are sacred of the little wisp of democracy on a tiny island in the Persian Gulf,” Shakespeare added.
Shakespeare also described Wednesday's attacks by Bahraini riot police and Saudi forces on demonstrators in Bahrain as a “deliberate organized large scale massacre of unarmed people.”
“These are people who for decades have made moderate demands and have protested in a non-violent way,” Shakespeare said.
He held the US responsible for the killing of the protesters, saying that the signal for the brutal crackdown came when US Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Saudi Arabia recently.
At least six people were killed in Bahrain when Saudi and Bahraini forces launched a brutal attack against anti-government protesters in the Bahrain's capital Manama on Wednesday.
In a report released on Thursday, Amnesty International called on Western governments to stop sending weapons to Bahrain, as the regime is stepping up its “unwarranted” crackdown on protesters, using arms supplied by the West.
More than 1,000 Saudi Arabian troops and 500 police from the United Arab Emirates, backed by tanks and helicopters, are in the oil-rich nation of Bahrain to help crush the month-long anti-government protests.
MN/MGH
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