New Child Martyred in Bahrain, Al-Khalifa Escalates Crackdown

Local Editor

The Bahraini child Habib Ali Jaafar was martyred Thursday due to the illness he suffered after inhaling toxic gas fired by regime forces.

According to information, the child's home was covered with toxic gases before his injury.

The 10-years old child's family took him abroad for treatment after his health deteriorated and the cancer spread throughout his body.

Meanwhile, the opposition plans to hold a major protest rally on August 14. Al-Khalifa regime has warned that any protests would face the "force of the law."
King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa issued a new decree on August 6, which modified the law on public gatherings to "ban organizing protests, rallies, gatherings or sit-ins in Manama, with the exception of sit-ins outside the offices of international organizations held with written police authorization.

In parallel, Bahrain human rights activist Mariam al-Khawaja revealed that the government is escalating its crackdown on protests in advance of the major opposition rally.
Al-Khawaja told HuffPost Live that the King's new decree merely legalizes practices that have been in place for years, and the government has begun increasing its crackdown on protestors in recent weeks.

"What we've been seeing in the past couple weeks since the announcing of the planned protest on the 14th of August ... [is] a very severe escalation in the crackdown. Usually what we see is house raids and arrests during the night. But in the past couple weeks we've been seeing them throughout the day. We haven't even been able to keep up with the numbers on the amount of people being arrested and the amount of homes being raided on a daily basis."

With the arrests mounting, al-Khawaja noted that often people are arrested without the opportunity to consult with a lawyer.
She added that blogger Mohammed Hasan was arrested and abused by police. His attorney reported "visible marks of beating on his arms," and added that there were marks of torture on his back and lower abdomen as well.
"The majority of cases of people that we document who have been arrested have either been beaten and or tortured. It ranges ... from physical, to psychological, to sexual," said al-Khawaja.

Source: News Agencies, Translated and Edited by website team