“No. No to blood Formula” and “your race is a crime,” chanted protesters who took to the streets in Shia villages, denouncing the decision of Formula One to go ahead with the race despite complaints of rights abuses by the kingdom’s Sunni rulers against Shias.
The protests ended in violence when demonstrators threw petrol bombs at riot police who responded with tear gas canisters and stun grenades, the witnesses said.
The February 14 Revolution Youth Coalition, a clandestine cyber group that mobilises protesters, boasted on its Twitter account that people took to the streets with “a steel will”.
It said people were “imposing a different rhythm in the street, in the first round of Volcanos of Flames” – referring to the name they have given to a week of demonstrations against the F1 race in the Gulf state.
Police announced they had arrested six people for blocking roads and setting cars ablaze, as the protests intensified ahead of today’s practice sessions at the Sakhir circuit south of the capital.
The interior ministry said late Wednesday that police arrested “a number of terrorists accused of committing terrorist attacks in several areas of the kingdom.”
It said police arrested a man suspected of setting a car on fire last Sunday at the Financial Harbour neighbourhood of Manama.
Four others were arrested over stealing and burning a car in the middle of a roundabout in the Hamad City suburb of Manama, in addition to a man who was among a group which blocked a main road in the capital, the ministry said in a statement.
