“This is a dress rehearsal for the return. We will return! We will return! Soon our sit-in will not be here but at the Pearl Roundabout,” said poet Ayat al-Qormozi, who became a face of the Arab Spring movement after she was jailed for reading out a poem criticising the king at Pearl Roundabout.
She was addressing a crowd of over 10,000 at the rally outside Manama, where anti-government protests last year were crushed.
Pearl Roundabout, a large traffic junction in Manama where the protesters camped out and rallied for a month, has since been closed off by security forces who monitor the area closely.
The opposition is trying to sustain pressure on the government ahead of the February 14 anniversary of the uprising. The reforms they want include an elected government.
Sheikh Ali Salman, leader of the largest opposition party Wefaq, called on activists to keep the protests peaceful but warned that intelligence agencies and pro-government militias would act as agent provocateurs in coming weeks.
He called on activists to use only Bahraini flags over the coming week and to avoid using party or sectarian symbols.
Salman said the protest movement would continue after February 14 and the country would not return to normal until the ruling elite ended its monopoly on power and the 14 prominent figures convicted for leading the protests, who are on hunger strike this week, were released.
