The Price of Freedom and Democracy

On Thursday, the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted an event entitled “The Price of Freedom and Democracy: Defiant Bahrainis and the Arab Spring.” The event honored Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, with the Ion Ratiu Democracy Award. The panel featured Mr. Rajab, Wafa Ali, a Bahraini journalist and public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, Carl Gershman, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy, and Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. Jane Harman, the president of the Wilson Center, gave opening remarks, and Christian Ostermann, the Wilson Center’s European Studies director, moderated the event.

After brief remarks from Harman congratulating Rajab for his efforts, Rajab addressed the audience. He praised the efforts of Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First in drawing attention to Bahrain’s ongoing calls for democratic reform, noting that Bahrain’s revolution was “not a revolution of elites, but of youth.” Rajab called the BICI report “not perfect, but good,” and criticized the report for not holding royal family members accountable for the human rights violations.

Next, Malinowski addressed the audience, giving several suggestions for U.S. policymakers to consider. He asserted that the Arab Spring forced the U.S. government to stop valuing “places over people,” and that the U.S. government must work to accommodate the interests of both sides. Additionally, Malinowski urged the government to stake tangible incentives for true reform in order to encourage quicker change. The Obama Administration must also ask for the BICI recommendations to be instituted to avoid a deepening crisis, he said, but the U.S. must make human rights a priority.

On the side of the event Shia Rights Watch representative congratulate Nabeel Rajab for the reward, and the efforts he put in Bahrain to bring democracy and freedom of religion to the Bahraini people. The Shia situation in Saudi Arabia was also discussed with Caryle Murphy an independent journalist and author of Passion For Islam, which explores Islam’s contemporary revival and the roots of religious extremism in the Middle East. Shia Rights Watch suggested that Caryle should look at the Islam from Shia beliefs and study the situation of Shia in Saudi Arabia, since she was one of the many reporters in the Arab Spring.

A Shia Rights Watch representative also spoke to Carl Gershman, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy, and expressed that Shia always welcome Democracy with respect to other ethnicity and religion but  governments discriminatng toward Shia is make them a minority and showing the lack of democracy in the Middle East.