In Bahrain citizen journalists are under arrest

On August 14, protesters have promised to take to the streets once more to demand democratic reform in the latest installment of a two-year long protest movement. The response of the government of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa to the protest wave has been repression, and the government has made it almost impossible for foreign reporters to cover the turmoil.

Following the protests that erupted in Bahrain as part of the Arab Spring the Bahraini government tried and convicted a group of doctors and nurses for providing treatment to protesters injured in clashes with government security forces.

 Twenty doctors and nurses jailed during the spring revolt against Bahrain's ruling monarchy received sentences of up to 15 years in prison Thursday.The government of the Persian Gulf kingdom leveled a range of charges against the medical workers, including possession of weapons and taking part in efforts to overthrow the regime. Human rights groups are calling the verdicts "bogus" and say the doctors are being falsely targeted for doing their jobs and treating wounded protesters.

Given the government's willingness to jail doctors and nurses for simply treating the injured imprisoning citizen journalists is just the next logical step in keeping the population uninformed and repressed.

 With August 14 quickly approaching, citizen journalists are the government's new targets. A week ago, I spoke online with a citizen journalist inside Bahrain who told me his arrest might be imminent because he feared a crackdown had begun against him and his colleagues. He had good reason to worry. At 3 am on July 31, fifteen masked men woke up Bahraini blogger Mohammed Hassan in his house and arrested him.His computer, camera, phone and every other electronic item found in his room were also confiscated. The young blogger's family was only told that he was "wanted." On Friday, after his lawyer AbdulAziz Mosa tweeted about evidence that Hassan had been beaten in detention, Mr. Mosa was arrested. 

The U.S. the government in its usual role of complete hypocrisy on the one hand "condemning the violence" while on the other fully supporting the governments doing the repression.

  "Under the frame and discourse of terrorism, the Bahraini regime is attempting to prevent protests from taking place," Maryam AlKhawaja, the Acting President of BCHR, told me over the phone from Copenhagen in Denmark. She accused the government of going after citizen journalists and activists to make coverage of the protests impossible. She tried to fly into Bahrain this Friday, but was turned away at the airport in Copenhagen, told by her airline that she was on a list of people banned from entering Bahrain.

Bahrain is a perfect case study of this double standard the U.S. has barely mentioned the abuses meted out by the government on its citizens for simply exercising their rights because of the U.S. Fifth fleet which is stationed in Bahrain