VERY heavy clashes between masses of anti-government protesters and the Bahraini security forces continued into last night, ahead of tomorrow’s F1 Grand Prix. The demonstrators are demanding that the Grand Prix be cancelled by its organisers because of the repressions, including killings and torturings, that are being carried out by the reactionary feudal regime.
On Thursday, thousands of protesters took to the streets, blocking roads with burning tyres.
Demonstrators say Bahrain’s hosting of the Formula One race will legitimise the Al Khalifa regime and its abuse of the rights of the Bahraini people.
Bahrainis say the Formula One governing body, the FIA, should cancel the event in Bahrain in response to the ongoing crackdown by the Al Khalifa regime on the protests.
The US and UK governments are determined that nothing of the sort will happen.
Bahrainis have been staging demonstrations since mid-February 2011, demanding political reform, democratic rights, and a constitutional monarchy to replace the current feudal regime that considers that it rules by divine right, and that its subjects have no rights.
In the course of the struggle, the masses have been moved by the murderous response of the regime to demand the ousting of the ruling Al Khalifa family dictatorship, to be replaced by a democracy.
In a joint statement, motorsport’s world governing body and Formula One management have said the race will go ahead as planned.
However, it is not just Formula One that is supporting the Khalifa family dictatorship.
The UK and US axis, which under Blair and Bush declared that it was their mission, even religious duty, to bring bourgeois democracy to the world and oust dictators, not only stopped short at the oil-rich Gulf feudal states, but insisted on arming the feudalists with the most modern destructive weapons for use in killing their own people, for which they have been rewarded with banquets at Buckingham Palace.
In fact, the Saudi Arabian army has moved into Bahrain in a big way, to be the final guarantor of the rule of the Al Khalifa family, and have been used in the repressive operations.
Also taking part in the repressive operations are ex-British police officers of high rank, who have been seconded or urged to seek employment as police enforcers for the Al Khalifa family.
As well, the US Fifth Fleet, nuclear armed and ready for action against Iran, treats Bahrain as its home base.
The US and UK regimes that stopped at nothing to kill many thousands of Iraqis, Libyans and now Syrians, in order to get rid of their nationalist leaders, equally stop at nothing to keep the blood-soaked Gulf feudalists on their thrones.
Clearly, the need for oil and the requirement to smash Iran, which has a parliament and elections, is a thousand times stronger than any democratic sentiments.
The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights says hundreds of people have been arrested in recent days and that clashes are continuing in villages very close to the Sakhir Formula One race track, south of the capital, Manama.
Yet the race goes on. Clearly, only a massive revolutionary uprising will stop it taking place, so important is it for the Western powers to keep the Gulf feudalists on their thrones.
British workers must support the democratic demands of the Bahraini people by bringing down the UK coalition government without whose support the Gulf feudalists could not survive for an hour.
