Bahrain: The media war - Listening Post. If the 2011 uprising in Bahrain was difficult to cover, the first anniversary, which was marked on February 14, was near impossible to report on.
Over the last year, the Bahraini government has been scaling up its information control apparatus and media access to the country is rigorously monitored and managed by the government and its team of Western PR advisors. Many journalists who applied to enter the country for the one-year anniversary were refused by Bahraini officials who said they could not handle the volume of visa applications they received. The government did, however, grant entry to a select few foreign news outlets. The German news weekly Der Spiegel was among them and on the eve of the anniversary, the magazine ran an exclusive interview with Bahrain's king, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.
Our News Divide this week focuses on the Bahraini uprising one year on and the media battle that continues to rage in the island country. Bahrain: Audacity of hope - People & Power. In mid February 2011, pro-democracy activists in the Gulf state of Bahrain took to the streets of the capital Manama in an attempt to win the kind of dramatic results achieved by their counterparts in Egypt and Tunisia.
At first the demands of this predominantly Shia-led group were for constitutional reform and a reduction of the powers of King Hamad and the ruling Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty. But opinion soon hardened into calls for the end of the monarchy when seven demonstrators were killed during a police action at Manama's Pearl Roundabout. After a month of continued protests, Bahrain's government invited some 1,500 troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to enter the country in support of local security forces before imposing martial law and instituting a fierce crackdown. Bahrain police repel protesters in Manama - Middle East. Security forces in Bahrain fired tear gas and stun grenades at protesters trying to occupy a landmark roundabout in the nation's capital on Monday, one day ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Gulf kingdom's popular uprising.
Thousands of opposition supporters marched through Manama's streets in the largest attempt in months to retake Pearl Roundabout, which served as the epicentre of weeks of pro-democracy protests last year. Thousands of riot police and other security forces have staked out positions around the square and across the Gulf island nation to prevent the opposition from staging a mass rally in or near the roundabout.