What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Interesting comments by [previous guest speaker] Mr. [Wafik] Moustafa, but I think not directly addressing the situation at hand as far as Bahrain. You, Mr. Rajab, of course yourself a human rights activist and recently just freed [from jail], what does it mean not even to be able to speak, and even as a human rights activist to be sent to jail and basically international entities may condemn it verbally but still you spent a long time in jail? –Your take, sir.
Rajab: It’s very clear now, the Bahrain government does not respect the international community, does not respect the United Nations institution.
In the past few days, many people have condemned the arresting of [Maryam] Khawaja and asked for her release and her father’s release as he was sentenced to life imprisonment and as he’s entering his 15 days of hunger strike.
As you know, the Bahraini government does not respect people, not only their people but does not respect anybody, and that is because they know they have the green light from some Western power they can do anything they want and nobody is going to criticize them from their friends, allies like the United Kingdom and United States.
Unfortunately at the time where you see a lot of condemnation coming from all over the world criticizing Bahrain’s human rights record, which is one of the worst today, according to human rights organizations, you see a minister in the UK yesterday praising the reform in Bahrain in the parliament yesterday. That is a very disappointing statement. That statement makes us very upset and very angry not only seeing the UK government abandon our struggle for democracy and human rights but supporting dictators.
That’s because of the influence of money, because of the influence of arms sales day by day, unfortunately. Those dictators have a lot of investment in this part of the world and many civilized countries.
As much money as they put, as much business they have, as much influence they have, unfortunately this influence is very negative. They can buy and they can vote silence from many countries mainly the United Kingdom. That’s why you don’t see people and that’s why we went today morning, we protested outside the office of the prime minister here in the UK, showing our anger, raising our concern on their policy…
Press TV: Our other guest in London is basically saying that the United States, for example, has condemned the situation that is taking place in Bahrain. What does that verbal condemnation mean, in your perspective, if it’s not followed up with any type of pressure?
Rajab: The United States lately has been very silent on Bahrain. Condemnation, if it is not followed by serious action, means nothing. As you’ve seen, the undersecretary of the United States government came to Bahrain to talk about the human rights issue and he was kicked out of the country by our government.
A few days ago, the State Department spokeswoman was asked about that and she said the Bahrain government invited him to go to Bahrain. But again the Bahrain reacted, saying that we did not invite him to come to Bahrain.
The United States were humiliated by Bahrain for the past several occasions. Again what I’m trying to point out, influence of the rulers in America and Europe is becoming so strong that they will be very soon changing governments.
We use to have more influence of those Western governments in our region but I can tell you and I can assure you that the influence of those rulers, money and arms sales has become so strong in those countries they can silence governments.
So when the undersecretary of the United States government – which is a superpower – was kicked out by this tiny, small state, and not even a reaction by the State Department, not even a reaction by the United States government, it is a humiliation.
It’s not because of Bahrain, I’m pretty sure. It’s not because of Bahrain. It’s because of the fear from the Saudis. Because of the fear from losing business, losing a lot of the arms sales.
I isolate myself. I isolate my issue. I isolate my case from the regional conflict. No, we have struggle in my country, Bahrain, struggle for democracy. We are ruled by dictators.
We are being treated like slaves in my country. A big percentage of my population today are behind bars not because of any sectarian issue, not because of anything. It’s because we are ruled by bad government, by a bad ruling family who treated us as second and third class, who have kept at least five to seven percent of my population in jail in the past three years, who have made thousands of people go into exile in the past three years, who made thousands of people live in hiding, who have raided tens of houses on a daily basis, who are importing people from the outside on a sectarian basis to change the demography of the state, who are pushing the people, economically, socially, culturally to leave the indigenous people and replace with the new generation. This is the most dangerous crime committed in today’s world.
Nobody has done that. No government that I know has done that other than South Africa.
Press TV: What do you see in this situation happening on the ground in Bahrain? Our other guest, Mr. Moustafa, said that it has to come from within.
What we’re seeing is continual demonstrations and people taking to the streets, but we also see from outside come in, Saudi troops and foreign troops, who have actually crushed or tried their best to crush the situation.
In that case, the people on the ground, the locals are actually demonstrating continually but the crackdown is so tough, also sometimes from foreign entities. What do you think it takes? Do you think it will take, for example, the United States or the United Kingdom to actually get involved?
Rajab: We didn’t ask the United States to be involved militarily. We don’t want to ask the international community to send troops, but we ask them to stop the troops to get in to Bahrain, to kill our own people. We ask them to stop the Saudis in sending their tanks to Bahrain to stop a revolution calling for democracy, justice and human rights.
We ask the Bahrain government to stop bringing thousands and tens of thousands of mercenaries from the outside to kill our own people, to demolish our own mosques.
We have on a daily basis, tens of houses being raided, gold, money being stolen by those mercenaries that the government brings from the outside. We have on a daily basis tens of people arrested, beaten, blood you can see on their face. Thousands of pictures you can see online. -On a daily basis, how people are being arrested by foreign mercenaries the Bahraini government brings.
You see your people that owns the country, been living in the country, and the ruling family bringing in new people and replacing the nation by withdrawing nationalities from parts of the people and then giving nationality to different people. That makes you very upset.
We think the United States, we think Britain, we think the European Union can do a lot to stop those crimes that are happening in Bahrain, like they did with South Africa, although they acted very late with South Africa.
The Bahraini government is practicing as much or worse policy by sectarian apartheid. Now they are spreading Shias and Sunnis in the place where they are living. They are not allowing Shia to work on a government institution or police and the army.
In most of the government institutions, the Shia were kicked out and not because of the Sunni but because people have been brought by our government to take their position and their place.
There are thousands of teachers today unemployed and the Bahraini government is going to bring teachers from Saudi, Egypt, Jordan just to make sure that those jobs are not taken by Shia. We have thousands and tens of thousands of people unemployed.
The Bahrain government is going to Jordan, going to Syria and bringing police and the army. For your own information, 80 percent of our police and army are made from people brought outside the country, and the local people are unemployed. People are targeted in their life, People, economically, are targeted. People are being arrested…
Press TV: What is the key? Is reconciliation possible at this time?
Rajab: Reconciliation? I mean, I’m with dialogue.
But again I want to correct the information of the gentleman speaking. We don’t have a Shia, Sunni problem. We have a problem between the government, a ruling family which happens to be Sunni, and the people of Bahrain, which happen to be the majority of them Shia. It’s not something based on sectarianism.
It’s a political issue about rights, justice, equality, freedom, independence from the judiciary, police who respect human rights, people who want to live in an equal manner, people who want to be treated as the other.
It’s not at all about religion, although the Bahrain government tried to present it as it is sectarian because of the [Persian] Gulf ruler. They want to divide the region based on the sects to mobilize Sunnis to support those dictators and to marginalize the movement in the region that is asking for freedom and democracy.
It’s not at all about religion. It’s about justice, about standards, about criteria that European countries fought for hundreds of years ago to achieve the democracy that they have today. We want the same thing. We want a similar thing.
Yes, if there is a possibility for a dialogue, for reconciliation, we welcome that. But the Bahraini regime is refusing anything. Instead, they are kicking everybody out of the country, out of their jobs, squeezing people economically so they make them beggars and they let them go out of the country.
This is the problem. It’s about the ruling family who tries to dominate everything, the parliament, the judiciary, the executive department, everything in the hands of a family. You have a government [with] at least 60 to 70 percent of the ministers are from a family. You have all the institutions, whether it’s a financial institution or a political one, all owned or covered by a member of the ruling family.
There is no room for people like me to come and speak the way I’m speaking on your channel right now. If I have a chance or had a room to speak – I was in jail. I was just out after spending two years because of Twitter, expressing my freedom of expression. I was just asking people to take part in a peaceful protest and I spent two years for that.
There are tens of hundreds of thousands of people, as I’m talking to you, that are in jail. There are tens of people being detained, arrested on a daily basis because they said something on Twitter, they said something on a TV station, they criticized the king, they criticize the police. This is the situation we don’t want.
It’s not about anything to do with religion. We respect people no matter what is their political or religious background, it’s not our business. We want to apply justice in our country. We want to apply equality. We want to apply freedom.
