I've blogged twice in the last few weeks on the pro-reform petitioners who were thrown in jail in Bahrain. As many as 20 faced life in prison on absurdly trumped-up charges. See my posts here and - after Human Rights Watch issued a condemnation - here.

Just two days after HRW sounded the claxon, 14 of the petitioners were supposedly released, according to this otherwise unconfirmed and typically cryptic report on the recent goings-on.

Still, the underlying problem of a disenfranchised Sh'ia majority (sound familiar?) remains. And as an aspiring exemplar of Mid-East democracy, Bahrain needs to do better. Sacking the Interior minister after police routed anti-American protestors the other day is a nice gesture, but hardly enough.

In tommorow's Daily Star (Lebanon), Abdulhadi Khalaf gives the backstory on how the elected Bahraini parliament (which includes Sh'ia office-holders) has been effectively squashed by the King and his own appointed council. As it happens, this is exactly what the petitioners were trying to change. One flaw in Khalaf's informative op-ed is that it fails to even mention the April 30 jailings, although that may be because it had to be submitted beforehand to the Arab Reform Bulletin, where it was first published.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 23, 2004 09:17 PM

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