Into Bahrain's Jaws of Hell

by Guest Sat Mar 28, 2015 1:33 pm

Jaw. In Arabic, it means 'weather', and in Bahrain it is a place name. Taken as the English word, Jaw evokes images of the maw of a hungry beast, its jaws wide open, a sickening welcome to the end of its prey's life. Medieval Christian art often featured a beast, jaws open, swallowing men whole. This was the gates of hell.
The image persists to the modern day. Robert Sargent named his famous war photograph of American soldiers wading from their ships towards the beaches of Normandy 'Into the Jaws of Death'.

The Jaws of Death - the gates of hell. It is an apt image for Jaw Prison. Located on the east coast of Bahrain, the journey to Jaw is bleak. One drives through desert, past a small village and an out-of-place holiday resort to reach it. The only things past Jaw are the police academy and a military airfield. Jaw is where civilisation ends in Bahrain, and it is where civilised manners die, and civilised people broken.
Jaw is facing a crisis. On 10 March there was a protest in the prison. A family at the visitation centre were told their son was barred from visits. There was an altercation with the inmate's sister, where a police officer apparently hit her. The inmates in their visitation lobby were all taken back to the main prison buildings, where outrage sparked action.

Some prisoners began barricading their cells in protest. The authorities retaliated by locking the buildings from the outside and calling in reinforcements. Hundreds of police swarmed the prison. Buildings 1, 3, 4 and 6 - the prison is made up of ten - were subjected to a siege situation. The police broke through the barricades and flushed the inmates out with teargas. They marched the inmates out into the courtyards, where every one of them was beaten and humiliated by the police. The forces took shifts terrorising the inmates, passing the baton between Bahraini police and Jordanian units. The inmates were shot at with shotguns and sound grenades, aimed at their bodies. Inmates were forced to address the officers as 'master', beaten if they asked to be taken to the toilet (where they were given 30 seconds to relieve themselves), beaten during meals, and forced to insult their families or face more beatings.

WARNING - SOME READERS MAY FIND THE IMAGES IN THIS BLOG POST DISTRESSING

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/nabeel-rajab/bahrain-jaw-prison_b_6939312.html?utm_hp_ref=uk