Today is the two-year anniversary of Bahrain’s Arab Spring, a pro-democracy uprising that continues despite ongoing harsh repression from the Bahraini regime. To mark the two-year anniversary of the Bahraini people’s struggle, Samara Lectures is pleased to offer a new talk:
BAHRAIN: THE UNCOVERED ARAB SPRING
In July 2012, human rights activist and documentary filmmaker Jen Marlowe traveled to the small Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain with Witness Bahrain in order to clandestinely observe, document, and expose the continued repression against Bahrain’s Arab Spring. In a multimedia presentation, Marlowe will discuss the stories she documented in her three weeks there, including: nurses treating injured protestors at underground clinics; updates from the doctors who were arrested and tortured under fabricated charges; the family of a fourteen-year old boy killed by a teargas canister shot to the back of his head, an eleven-year old boy who was arrested while playing soccer with his friends and jailed for a month; Bahrainis whose homes had just been raided and family members arrested in an alarming upsurge of nighttime house-raids; youth on the streets clashing daily with riot police. Marlowe also conducted the final interview with human rights defender Nabeel Rajab before he was taken to prison for three months because of a tweet that he sent, surreptitiously filming the arrest itself, as well. (Rajab’s prison sentence was later extended to two years. He remains behind bars.) Marlowe’s talk will explore the central role women have played in Bahrain’s Arab Spring, and will also examine the overly simplistic “Shi’a versus Sunni” analysis that has been used to characterize the Bahrain uprising. Throughout, Marlowe will highlight the inspirational Bahraini pro-democracy and human rights activists, who continue their struggle for democracy and freedom at great personal risk.