Highly Critical False Information, Yet to be Retracted
In 2011, news that was spread and yet to be questioned by the mass media and independent NGO’s, was highly critical false information. To date with the anniversary of Feb 14th the same information is being used and spread on social media as if the truth.
On February 17th, 2011, the Bahrain hash tag on twitter went wild with people worldwide trying to access information as it was supposedly live streamed. The information on twitter being live would raise the expectation of truth, however when analyzing the data, not surprisingly, the truth is very far from it.
This above image is taken from the Wikipedia website on “Bahrain-Timeline”. Bahraini uprising (2011–present) Wikipedia presented false information which should lead anyone trying to establish the truth to question the claims.
However even The London Evening Standard published the headline, “A girl aged two was today reported to have been killed in Bahrain when armed police stormed a peaceful protest camp to drive out anti-government demonstrators. Graphic images were released showing the child’s bullet-ridden body apparently lying in hospital.”
The writer went on to write:
She is understood to have been with her parents when riot officers using tear gas, live bullets and clubs swooped on thousands camped in the main square in the capital Manama at around 3am local time. Men, women and young children, many of whom had been sleeping, were forced out of Pearl Square in the unannounced crackdown by police in tanks and armored vehicles.
Medical teams said people were shot, trampled, beaten and suffocated by the gas amid the chaos with plainclothes officers seen firing shotguns as protesters tried to flee. At least five people have been killed and more than 100 injured.
Demonstrators said they were chased by police down side streets as they fled. Several ambulance drivers reported being attacked as they tried to reach the injured. Protesters said dozens of people were missing amid claims they had been arrested and imprisoned. Demonstrators also reported the army had taken people shot to a military hospital, which the public cannot visit.
Thousands started to gather this afternoon at another hospital, the Salmaniya, as they vowed to make it the new rallying point of the anti-government movement after police razed the camp and used barbed wire to seal off the square. As many as 50 tanks rolled through the capital’s streets today as the military locked down the Gulf Island’s capital and banned protests.
Images of the dead girl and other killed demonstrators were rapidly circulated by mobile phone.
Protester Ali al-Haji said: “We send this picture so the world can see what the government is doing to us.” He said: “The first person responsible for this is the king. He is responsible for the killing, for the attacks on women and children. They attacked us. They raised the bar that we will now meet. We are ready to throw the king out.
We will not stop.” Mahmoud Mansouri, a protester, said police surrounded the camp and then quickly moved in. “We yelled, ‘We are peaceful! Peaceful!’ The women and children were attacked just like the rest of us. “They moved in as soon as the media left us.
They knew what they were doing,” he said. Dr Sadek Akikri, 44, said he was tending to injured protesters at a makeshift medical tent in the square when the police stormed in. He said he was tied up and severely beaten and then thrown on a bus with others. He said the police beating him spoke Urdu, the main language of Pakistan.
A pillar of the protesters’ demands is to end the Sunni regime’s practice of granting citizenship to Sunnis from other countries to try to dilute the strength of the majority Shias. Many of the new citizens work in security. The deaths have fuelled the protesters’ fury and demands and they have now started to call for the removal of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, previously seen as untouchable.
Protesters, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, have been calling for a major political overhaul in the tiny kingdom, which is next door to Saudi Arabia and has a native population of 600,000. The 70 per cent Shia majority have been ruled over by the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy for more than 200 years.
Despite their greater numbers the Shias claim they are blocked from senior government posts or positions of power in the military and security services and that they face systematic discrimination. Shia opposition leader Abdul Jalil Khalil today said his 18 parliament members had resigned in protest at the killings. Tens of thousands have poured into the central square since Monday, calling for change and a move to a constitutional democracy. Many demanded that the government provide more jobs and better housing and the release of all political detainees. Bahrain is a pillar of Washington’s military framework in the region. It hosts the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, a counterbalance to Iran’s efforts to expand its influence in the region. Any prolonged crisis opens the door for a flashpoint between Iran and its Arab rivals in the Gulf.”
One wonders how much of the article one can rely on as truth. The wikipedia stated that four people were killed, the writer in the London Evening Standard claims five, including a two-year-old girl shot multiple times by police has never been retracted despite the fact that the BICI report never mentioned this action. Regardless, the information was false.
The fact that a leader in the opposition Al Wefaq, also commented in this article meant that he must have read the article once published and must have been aware of the false information the article contained, as were the NGO’s who also came up with a report which included false information of the two year old girl.
A joint report titled “Bahrain The Human Price for Freedom and Social Justice” was published in November, 2011.
The information disseminated in this report has yet to be retracted and yet it was presented to the United Nations and carried by numerous media outlets including the Bahrain Human Rights Society, the BCHR and Pomed..
I have not gone on to study the complete document however it is surprising that such a statement can be made and presented as a factual report, and not even as alleged, and yet not questioned by even Pomed. If even a Project on Democracy in the Middle East can’t be relied upon to question false information, then it is questionable as to how honest an establishment promoting supposedly democracy for all really is.
A little research and the real facts are placed that on the 17th of February while the mass media indulged for days and weeks about a 2 year old girl death, was highly critical false information and yet to be retracted by the media and by the NGO’s. Does this not raise questions as to the credibility of the NGO’s and the mass media at all? Why am I not surprised.
Again, this is the picture of the unfortunate two year old that was tweeted and used by the protesters, NGO’s, mass media and claimed to be shot by riot police and placed in the Wikipedia.
The girl in the image is Romklao Plu whose image was used by the protesters at the GCC round about on the 17th February 2011, as a child shot by the police. On Thursday, December 18, 2008, the headline read Rotweiller dogs kill thai baby girl .
Two Rottweiler (Rottweil Metzgerhund) dogs, owned by a Dutch man named Johannas Bernadas based in Nakhon Ratchasima, mauled his 20 month old daughter to death early yesterday, police said. The toddler named Romklao Plu (Thai: ร่มเกล้า พลู), nicknamed Nina, was attacked and killed in an unprovoked attack inside her house compound in Muang district at 1 am.
Her 42 year old mother, Jintana Plu, was also severely injured in her desperate efforts to save the child, as the dogs had savaged her legs. It is disheartening to see the mass media and Wikipedia not verify the fact that a twenty month old child is used to depict horror in Bahrain, three years after her death in Thailand. This false information had been tweeted 86 times with 2021 views. Read more here.
Besides the above false information, on the 13th of March 2011, Al Wefaq uploaded a video on their official you tube channel titled ‘Face To Face Shooting in Bahrain
This is a video that was uploaded by Al Wefaq and disseminated by the mass media. As of November 28th of 2012, this video had 1,011,382 views. It shows a man in a red shirt and a police officer arguing and then the police officer discharges his firearm, and from the angle of the camera, it appears that he is shot at least once, possibly twice.
The video ends and the world assumed he was shot brutally at close range. After this video emerged, the Independent wrote an article on the event and included 4 screenshots of the video.
The article points out that there is no evidence of what actually occurred in the event; what types of weapon was used, what the intent was, what happened to the protestor, or even who the protestor was. Yet the article continues to state that, “Such ruthlessness appeared to be an indication of the strength of the authorities’ rejection of reform.”
On the 13th March 2011, “Face to Face Shooting in Bahrain 2’ was uploaded by a you tube account ”Bahrain Documentary Channel”
The second video is an extended version of the same incident as the first video, but from a different angle. One sees a large group of protestors approaching a police blockade. The police are standing in a group. As the protestors move in on the group of police, at 0:21 seconds, the police start shooting tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd.
Al Wefaq its birth and origins.
