Repression in Bahrain

Bahrain is a small is­land king­dom loc­ated in the cen­ter of the Per­sian Gulf, mak­ing it a key hub of in­ter­na­tion­al bank­ing and oil trans­port, and a cru­cial U.S. ally in the Middle East. A largely pros­per­ous and fin­an­cially stable coun­try, Bahrain so­ci­ety is non­ethe­less fraught with sec­tari­an ten­sions, be­cause al­though two-thirds of the pop­u­la­tion is Shiite Muslim, the rul­ing fam­ily and a ma­jor­ity of gov­ern­ment, mil­it­ary, and cor­por­ate lead­ers are Sunni Muslims. Read more »