As Bahrain descends into its “three days of rage” leading up to Sunday’s Grand Prix, at once barring journalists and repelling Formula One drivers, we have to wonder what pro-democracy protesters would make of a preened politician refusing to denounce their oppressor on prime-time TV.
Conservative Party Chairman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, whose hair is so shiny it reflects off every camera pointing at her, told BBC Question Time viewers last night that it would be “mean” to condemn the Queen for entertaining the King of Bahrain at a Diamond Jubilee luncheon.
Woops! Poor Liz. We clearly should never have said anything about the matter, despite, you know, living in a democracy and all. Like Bahraini king Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa authorising his army to detain nearly 3000 pro-democracy protesters and kill more than 50, perhaps our head of state should be able to do exactly what she likes without criticism. Does the Queen even know of the plight of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, the former president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights who has been on hunger strike for 73 days now? He was sentenced to life imprisonment in June for plotting a coup against the ruling elite; the sentence was imposed under emergency laws specifically targeting activists who demonstrated in the uprisings of February and March last year.
Bahrain, like Syria, is still very much in the middle of its Arab Spring, more than a year after uprisings began. At first ignored by mainstream media and politicians who preferred to entertain the ethics surrounding a NATO mission in Libya, it is perhaps not far-fetched to suggest that were it not for the Formula One Grand Prix, this small island in the Persian Gulf wouldn’t have received half the international media coverage it has. There seems no need to question why this might be: the coalition government, for all its disgust at Russia’s arms deals with Syria, authorised the sale of £2.2m of arms to Bahrain in the summer.
Civil unrest in Bahrain is still being swept under the carpet. Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone earlier this month refused to withdraw the Grand Prix from the country, despite doing so last year. Former leader of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Inquiry Squad, John “Yates of the Yard” Yates, was appointed by Al Khalifa to help out his security services (from one moral scandal to another, some might say). As though writing a holiday postcard home, he commented that Bahrain was “a delightful place”. And while the Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa was embarrassed into pulling out of an invitation to last year’s ubiquitous royal wedding, Bahraini and British royalty will finally reconcile at a Windsor Castle jubilee lunch next month.
The whole charade smacks of everything that is wrong with an unelected head of state. We can nod alongside William Hague’s disapproval of the use of live ammunition on Bahraini activists, even protest against the exchange of arms approved by the same man’s own government. But God forbid we should be “mean” enough to criticise the Queen when all she wants to do is celebrate 60 years of unelected rule with her dictator friends.
Baroness Warsi might have caused outrage last night – but she also revealed a critical truth about Britain. Question the powers that be, and you get shot down. It might not be torture and teargas, but it’s certainly not democratic.
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