It’s been a difficult few months in Bahrain, that’s true, but we have dealt with it and have now overcome the worst of it. It’s been a learning curve for many of us as we observed the changes taking place in ourselves, our friends and the country many of us expats call home. We gained local knowledge, we discussed local politics and we verbalized our views and thoughts more freely than we have ever done before. And when it came to showing our support at the rallies we were there also, standing alongside the local community and we felt welcomed.
However, as we struggled to understand the complexities of the riots taking place in Bahrain we were more baffled by the complete and utter disaster taking place with the international media. Amazed at BBC’s coverage, appalled by Sky News, disgusted by CCN’s reporting and repulsed by Al Jazeera’s accounts of the past riots to mention a few, and best you don’t get me started on the world newspapers. The internet, love it or hate it, became a battle ground for the war of the words. It was incredible how quickly cyberspace became a catalyst for hatred. Videos were uploaded, blogs were inflaming, tweets were blasphemous, facebook must have seen new pages and causes being established at an incredible speed until in the end not only were we fighting civil unrest but we were actually having a harder time combating this thing called virtual reality.
The opposition was ahead of the media game from the start, their attack on Bahrain had been well planned, well-orchestrated and well -funded by Iranian insurgents. They knew their plan and they paid well. They brought in journalists who were remunerated for their one sided accounts and threatened those who refused to print lies. They uploaded amateur videos of poorly staged incidents between them and the police, videos on Youtube that spread like wild fire throughout the world and that were used on news broadcasts. To the outsiders it looked like complete and utter mayhem, mass slaughter and massacre by the Bahraini police. How could we counterattack such images, how could we come back from media hell?
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t supposed to be. If something is worth fighting for then it is never going to be an easy match. But we started slowly and from one blog to another, from one tweet to the next and from one voice to the other we did counterattack the inaccuracies that had been said against us and eventually we were heard, but more importantly believed, by the entire world.
The internet is loaded with stage-managed videos, with well thought out slanderous interviews, and there are some pieces that actually tell the truth. But with so much choice it’s sometimes hard to tell which ones are genuine and which ones are outright lies. Unless of course you come across the videos where you do actually see the car running over the police man numerous times, where the thugs are throwing stones, Molotov cocktails and yielding knives, or the ones of Salmaniya hospital being hijacked and used as their control center or of the uprising in Bahrain University. And if you are lucky maybe you will find the videos of Bahrainis crying out for the love of their King and their country.
For those of us who have lived through the hell of the past few months and watched our sunny Bahrain become a shadow of itself, let it be our time to rise up and tell the truth of what really happened here in Bahrain. We have finally found our voices, united we stand like never before, and never has there been a more crucial time in our lives when we have needed to use those voices. Bahrain WAS attacked, it WAS tortured but its stronger now than it has ever been, and let that be a warning to self-centred idiots who still think they can change it into Iran. NO WAY!
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