The Al Khalifas: the perverts of Bahrain

By Rodney Shakespeare

His Majesty’s forces were using something coming from the depths of hell and iniquity. The ‘dum-dum’ bullet.

Dum-dum bullets were outlawed internationally by the Hague Convention in 1899. His Majesty, however, thinking himself moral, cultured and educated, seems not to have heard. Perhaps history is not one of his strong points.

As for the Khalifas, they are scum."

Al Kalifa of Bahrain

Early on in the Bahraini revolution there came strange information. In fact, ‘strange’ did not seem the right word because the information was unbelievable. Doctors and nurses were being arrested not just for supporting democracy but for treating anybody who had been wounded during the demonstrations.

Doctors and nurses arrested for treating the wounded? Impossible! As every decent person knows, all medics are professionally- and duty-bound to treat the wounded. Such duty shows humans at their best and is a key part of any definition of civilisation. Surely the strange information could not be true.

Yet it was true. In the most fundamental way, civilisation was being overthrown on the orders of Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the King of Bahrain. Believe it or not, this King likes to think of himself as moral, likes to think of himself as cultured, and likes to think of himself as educated which, taken with the realities of being an absolute monarch, no doubt explains why he always insists on being addressed as “Your Majesty”.

But there was worse to come. More, even stranger, information was leaking out. Nurses were being tortured to sign false confessions that they had put their hands into wounds and then pulled them apart so as to make the wounds many times larger than they would otherwise have been.

Excuse me, you say, that really is impossible! Stop making up things! Nurses have enough trouble repairing wounds without making them several times larger!

Alas, it was not impossible. The nurses were certainly being tortured to sign false confessions and, yes, the wounds were horrible and huge. Indeed, they were somewhere in area between that of a baseball and a small football and of great depth. These were ghastly wounds which did not make sense because ordinary bullets usually make holes, often going straight through. These wounds, however, could not have been made by ordinary bullets; they must have been made by something of considerable explosive force.

And they were. His Majesty’s forces were using something coming from the depths of hell and iniquity? The ‘dum-dum’ bullet. Dum-dum bullets instantaneously expand on contact causing horrific wounds. The nurses were being tortured to make false confessions and so hide the use of dum-dum bullets by the regime.

Dum-dum bullets were outlawed internationally by the Hague Convention in 1899. His Majesty, however, thinking himself moral, cultured and educated, seems not to have heard. Perhaps history is not one of his strong points.

His Majesty’s forces, aided by thugs from Saudi Arabia, then came up with another idea. They started to use shot guns with the deliberate purpose of destroying people’s eyes. Come to think of it perhaps the King did study some history (which is replete with examples of cruelty) and decided to get himself a place in the school books of the future.

But for sheer, smelly nastiness one of the King’s sons is definitely a winner. Prince Sheikh Nasser Khalifa is not content with ordering torture. Oh no, the Prince likes doing the torturing himself. Donning a mask (which, unfortunately for him, has a tendency to slip so that his face has been seen with the result that he will one day find himself up before a court of criminal justice) he specialises in torturing athletes. This is probably because, although head of the Bahrain Olympic committee, he is no athlete himself and, deep down (or not so deep down), is jealous.

The King, the Prince and their thugs continue to shoot, imprison and torture, bringing pain and death to the young (they seem to specialise in injuring children) and old. A summary might be that the regime takes pride in being as degenerate as it is possible to be.

Except that they are not just degenerate, they are disgusting perverts, sexual perverts with the latest manifestations being something which, such their nastiness, can only have been thought up by members of the Royal Family themselves.

A lawyer and his wife stayed in a chalet which, unknown to them, had been fitted with a hidden recording camera. The recording was then published so as to humiliate them by revealing what is normally private.

Then there is the young woman, arrested for taking part in a peaceful anti-regime protest. She has been subjected to horrific treatment, but the sexual perverts not only stripped her but took photographs of her naked body and published them. Again, the object is to humiliate.

But all decent people know that there is no humiliation for the lawyer, no humiliation for the wife, and no humiliation for the young woman. Indeed, in the minds of all decent people (which description will never encompass the seedy, dirty-raincoat-wearing al-Khalifas) the lawyer, wife and young woman are splendid human beings the same as the rest of us, or rather, the same as all decent people and not sexual perverts.

We honour the lawyer, honour the wife and honour the young woman.

As for the Khalifas, they are scum.