IRNA -- Prominent Bahraini human rights activist Maryam al-Khawaja here Wednesday lambasted latest weapons deal between Berlin and Riyadh, involving reported sale of up to 200 Leopard 2 tanks worth billions of euros.In an interview with the daily Frankfurter Rundschau, Al-Khawaja of the Bahrain
Center for Human Rights stressed such arms deliveries were not only morally but also politically wrong.
'With this deal, Germany is showing that it is a partner to those who suppress us,' said
the activist whose father is a political prisoner in her country.
She stressed that the western governments had to decide whether they want to jeopardize their long-term relations with new democratic governments in the region for short-term business deals with despotic regimes.
Al-Khawaja reiterated that the Bahrainis were dismayed to see that the West would put its interests over the need to protect human rights and would neither put pressure on the regime in Manama nor criticize the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain in March.
She warned that continuing western support for the regimes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia could further radicalize the protests in the small Persian Gulf kingdom.
Al-Khawaja was quoted saying earlier this month that Bahrainis view the US and Britain
as accomplices in the deadly crackdown of the Bahraini regime.
She added that 'the Bahraini people believe to a certain degree of direct US and UK
complicity because of the way they handled the situation.'
The activist pointed out that the Bahraini perception about US and British complicity was highlighted by the fact that both countries did 'not make a clear and strong stance' on the brutal security crackdown in the tiny Arab kingdom.
In addition, Bahrainis viewed the visit of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Manama as 'very suspicious,' according to al-Khawaja.
The Bahraini people think that the US knew beforehand of the security clampdown in their country but question whether he endorsed it, said the activist whose family members are still imprisoned and brutally tortured by the Al-Khalifa regime.
While Washington initially urged Bahrain's government to negotiate with the opposition, it has issued no strong condemnation of Bahrain's use of violence and intimidation since the middle of March, when Saudi Arabia sent more than 1,000 troops into Bahrain to help the Al-Khalifa regime quell the protest movement that started in February asking for democratic reforms.
The US refusal to condemn massive human rights abuses committed by the Bahraini security forces while condemning such abuses in Libya and Yemen has undermined any credibility it had with Bahrainis.
Human right groups have time and again complained that the White House has been publicly mum amid reports that Bahrain's Sunni-led government is waging a violent and bloody crackdown — destroying Shi'a mosques, illegally detaining and torturing dissidents, attacking medical personnel to prevent them from treating wounded protesters, abusing women and girls, and expelling journalists from the island kingdom.
