MANAMA, 20 June 2005 — Police in Bahrain beat and arrested demonstrators protesting for jobs in the capital Manama yesterday, rights activists and witnesses said, but the Interior Ministry said police had been attacked first.
“A group of about 50 unemployed and other sympathizers were demonstrating peacefully near the royal court when police harshly attacked them, beat them and arrested more than 30 of them,” human rights activist Nabeel Rajab said.
Among those beaten and arrested was Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, head of the banned Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Rajab said. Other witnesses said police hit demonstrators with batons.
But an Interior Ministry official told the Bahrain News Agency that some demonstrators “assaulted and injured some policemen ... who were forced to disperse them”.
He said police had asked the demonstrators to leave the area close to the royal court — off limits for such gatherings.
Most had been released after a brief detention, the official added, although some refused to leave the lock-up and demanded an investigation into the police’s behavior.
The government says unemployment in the country is about 15 percent.
Khawaja was pardoned by King Hamad last year, after being sentenced to a year in prison for publicly blaming the prime minister for the country’s economic woes.
