Bahraini security forces on Sunday dispersed several hundred Shia demonstrators who gathered outside the capital Manama for the fourth day in a row, an AFP correspondent said. Riot police stormed a roundabout on the Budaiya highway where men and women had gathered and chanted slogans against the government of the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
On Thursday, female blogger Zainab al-Khawaja was roughed up, handcuffed and dragged off into custody from the same roundabout for refusing to end a sit-in.
Police fired tear gas on Sunday before they used batons to chase demonstrators out of the area.
Shia youth groups had called for a series of consecutive protests on the highway which links Shia villages with Manama's former Pearl Square, the focal point of a month-long pro-democracy uprising that was crushed in March.
The crackdown comes even after Bahrain's government promised reforms following the publication last month of a highly critical report into the protests in February and March.
The report said the death toll from the crackdown on the Shia-led pro-democracy protests had reached 35, and that police had used "excessive force" and tortured detainees.
Police vehicles are still deployed at the roundabout and patrol the area. Before police arrived, young men brandishing the red-and-white Bahraini flags and women in the traditional black abaya cloaks stood defiantly insisting that their movement was peaceful.
"I am a Bahraini citizen. It is my right to work in the army or the public sector. I would protect this homeland more than the foreign" recruits, said Mohammed Mulla Ahmed Ali, 19, who carried a Bahraini flag.
"We want to feel like citizens," he said, showing the scars of a deep cut in his stomach and birdshot pellets on his chest, saying he was struck on March 16 during the crackdown. The marketing student said he was suspended from university, like many Shias who faced suspension from schools or were fired from jobs for taking part in demonstrations. He also was in jail for three months. Hawraa al-Halawati, 28, a female architect who also lost her job after three years as a public servant echoed protesters' demands for a change of the government, led by King Hamad's uncle Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa.
"We don't want this government. They sacked us from our jobs... There is no freedom of expression," she told AFP. "We are not scared," she said, adding that taking part in protests has become a daily routine for her.
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