Al Khalifa seeks to legitimize its position: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Saeed Shehabi, a Bahraini opposition leader in London, about anti-regime demonstrators holding protest rallies across Bahrain, demanding the cancellation of the upcoming Formula One Grand Prix in the country.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Essentially anti-regime protests are really nothing new in Bahrain but every year, around the same time that the F-One races are being held, these protests in a way intensify or get intensified perhaps in a bid to draw the absent attention of the so-called international community to the Bahraini regime’s suppression of dissent. So why is the F-One event so important for both the protesters and the regime?

Shehabi: First of all an illegal, illegitimate, killer, murderous, [torturous] regime must not be given the chance to breathe through the international atmosphere in order to kill more and destroy more of its own people.  

Secondly, for the people, they do not want that the regime be seen as in normal conditions at a time when the people themselves are being denied the right to live humanely and with dignity.

Thirdly, the Formula One Race has been organized at a high cost from the national treasury. The regime is paying around 40 million dollars just to get these games held in the country in order to give itself prestigious place in the international community. That is not going to be allowed. So the people have decided in the past five years to call for cancellation of this blood game or blood race as they call it in order to deny the regime the chance to breathe freely at the time when the people are denied the freedom to live. Hundreds, thousands are in jail, many people have been denied the right to work, people have been tortured to death, people have been exiled, only in the last few weeks several people have been illegally deported from the country, so this regime must not be welcomed by the international community and must not be given the chance to live at the expense of the death of people.

Press TV: There have been great deal of criticisms leveled against the government’s actions specifically in holding such events but why do you think the government is being so defiant irrespective to such criticisms and against them?

Shehabi: It boils down to its feeling that it is an illegitimate government so it has got a legitimacy crisis. This is why they try to install their own figures at the top of some international games like FIFA. They wanted to install one of their people but thanks to God the people were brave enough to tell the international community that their candidate for FIFA was a member of torture committee formed by the regime in 2011.

They want to make everything possible to give themselves the chance to legitimize their position and they think that legitimacy will come from outside, the people say legitimacy must come from us the people not from the outside and we will decide whether you are given the chance to legitimize yourself or not.

So this is why they will continue to demonstrate and they in fact last year – sorry this is the last point – last year under an intensive pressure the Formula One committee promised that they would take human rights into consideration but unfortunately they have reneged on their promise this year.

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