MANAMA, 27 August 2004 — Bahrain’s top Shiite leaders said yesterday that they would march to Najaf and protect it if Iraq’s highest Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called upon Muslims to join efforts to end the fighting and bring peace back to the city.
Sheikh Ali Salman, an opposition leader and spokesman for the organizers, said Shiite leaders were prepared to march in a peaceful protest to Najaf to end the bloodbath that continued for more than three weeks if Ayatollah Sistani called upon them to join him. “What is taking place in the holy city and Iraq in general is a provocation to the Muslims’ feelings around the world,” he said.
He added that the next few hours would be critical and that they were optimistic that reason would prevail, but if reason failed they would comply with Sistani’s directives.
Sheikh Salman was speaking during a sit-in inside Ras Al-Romman Mosque in the heart of Manama that was called for by top Shiite leaders in Bahrain.
“The Iraqi people are paying the price of the superpowers’ struggle for hegemony and control of the region,” Sheikh Salman said.
“US policy had blocked every peaceful attempt to bring this standoff to a peaceful end and they always favored the policy of the gun to negotiations,” he added.
The protest will continue today today depending on the developments in Iraq.
Solidarity With Palestinians
Bahrainis staged a hunger strike yesterday in support of imprisoned Palestinians who began an open ended fast on Aug. 15 to demand better treatment in Israeli prisons.
Protesters who refrained from eating from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. gathered in a tent set up next to the UN House in the heart of Manama where various activities and discussions were held to express solidarity with their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The head of the Bahrain Society Against Normalization with the Zionist Enemy, Ebrahim Kamal Al-Deen, said that political, social, feminist, youth, legal and human rights societies had joined the effort to protest the inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners who are subjected to humiliation and deprived of basic rights like regular family visits, access to proper sanitation and public phones, and proper medical care.
“They are subjected to mental and physical torture by being deprived of basic rights and placed in solitary confinement,” he said.
The protest followed a call to support the hunger strike that started on Aug. 15 by around 2,800 Palestinian prisoners in various Israeli jails. Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, had called for the hunger strike.
