Press Release: A Dangerous Escalation - At Least 11 Shotgun Injuries on 18 April 2012 in Bahrain

[Image from bahrainwatch.org] [Image from bahrainwatch.org]

Press Release: A Dangerous Escalation - At Least 11 Shotgun Injuries on 18 April 2012 in Bahrain

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was released by Bahrain Watch on 19 April 2012.]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: bill@bahrainwatch.org 
Twitter: @bhwatch

April 19, 2012

A DANGEROUS ESCALATION: AT LEAST 11 SHOTGUN INJURIES ON 18 APRIL 2012

Bahrain Watch Identifies Cyprus, UK, and Italian Birdshot, and Other Live Ammunition

[Manama] Activist group Bahrain Watch has observed a dramatic escalation in the use of birdshot and live ammunition by police against protesters over the past week, as well as a marked increase in related injuries.  Many individuals are reported injured in the back, raising serious questions about whether police are using proportional force and are discharging their firearms only as a last resort, as required by Bahrain’s new police code of conduct.  Meanwhile, new video shows policemen laughing as they repeatedly beat an arrestee with their shotguns, the result of continuing impunity.

Bahrain Watch has identified six birdshot manufacturers, and four manufacturers of live ammunition whose products have been used in Bahrain.  The widespread use of these types of ammunition to control protests and riots makes Bahrain an international pariah in policing.

What is Birdshot?

Broadly, ammunition for shotguns is referred to as “shot,” and consists of pellets of a certain material inside a cartridge.  Larger pellets are referred to as “buckshot,” whereas smaller pellets are called “birdshot.”  Within the category of birdshot, shot is assigned a number to indicate the diameter of the pellets.  Bahrain Watch has observed two sizes of metallic birdshot in Bahrain: #2 birdshot (pellet diameter of about 3.8mm), and #8 birdshot (pellet diameter of about 2.2mm).  Typically, a #2 birdshot cartridge would have on the order of 100 pellets, whereas a #8 birdshot cartridge would have on the order of 500 pellets, assuming pellets are made of lead or a similar metal.  Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior denies that it uses #2 birdshot.

Birdshot is typically used for hunting animals, or for clay shooting, where competitors shoot to break flying stone discs.  Metallic birdshot is almost never used for riot control.  When shotguns are employed for riot control in other countries, officers typically shoot “less-lethal” ammunition such as “beanbag rounds.”  In contrast, Bahrain’s police primarily use cartridges specifically designed and marketed for hunting or clay shooting.  Eleven civilians were killed with birdshot in Bahrain during 2011 according to the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry and Human Rights Watch, and scores have been injured throughout 2011 and 2012.

April 18, 2012: Bahrain’s Birdshot Night

While Bahrain Watch has observed near-continuous use of birdshot since the start of the uprising in February 2011, reports of birdshot use and injuries have dramatically spiked in the last week.  On 12 and 13 April 2012, Bahrain Watch noted an abnormally large number of images of shotgun cartridges posted by activists from at least seven areas around Bahrain (A’ali, Bani Jamrah, Sehla, Ma’ameer, Sitra, and Duraz).  On 13 April, an individual was seriously injured by birdshot at a funeral, and remains in the hospital.

On 18 April 2012, Bahrain Watch noted an unusually large number of images and videos of birdshot injuries from at least five areas around Bahrain.  Reports on Twitter claimed up to 23 were injured by shotgun pellets on the night of 18 April.  No medical records exist, as birdshot victims are treated in private homes; presenting at a hospital with a birdshot injury may mean arrest.  Through pictures posted by village news networks and activists, Bahrain Watch has seen at least 11 of these injured individuals.

Bahrain Watch first performs reverse image searches on all posted images to validate their recency  To identify distinct injuries, images from a given village are compared with each other.

Bahrain Watch stresses that the number of injuries is likely to be higher than 11, but cannot determine the number of additional distinct individuals injured.  A description of the observed injuries from 18 April follows.

In Sanabis, where protesters chanted anti-regime slogans during a visit by Bahrain’s Crown Prince earlier that day, multiple injuries were reported in the evening.  A village news agency in Sanabis posted a photo album of injuries.  Among other birdshot injuries, the album shows:

In the village of Abu Quwah, photos show:

On the island of Sitra, photos and videos show:

  • An individual with more than 30 pellets mainly on the right side of his body.  16 pellets are visible in this still image, and the remaining pellets are seen in this video (0:05 - 0:29).
  • An individual with approximately 18 pellets mainly on the right side of his body, also seen in this.
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412