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Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible account work spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. Considering several episodes of contention in Bahrain, from tribal resistance to the British reforms of the 1920s, the rise of the Higher Executive Committee in the 1950s, the leftist agitation of the 1970s, the 1990s Intifada and the 2011 Uprising, Marc Owen Jones offers never before seen insights into the British role in Bahrain, as well as the activities of the Al Khalifa Ruling Family. From the plundering of Bahrain's resources, to new information about the torture and murder of Bahrain civilians, this study reveals new facts about Bahrain's troubled political history. Using freedom of information requests, historical documents, interviews, and data from social media, this is a rich and original interdisciplinary history of Bahrain over one hundred years.
List of contents
Introduction: Political Repression in Bahrain in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century; 1. Defining Political Repression; 2. The Repression Playbook; 3. Political Statecraft: Between Democratisation, Discord and Division; 4. Torture, Arrests, and other Personal Integrity Violations; 5. Repressive Law and Legal Repression; 6. Information Controls: From Surveillance to Social Media and Fake News; Conclusion: Between Retrograde Repression and Repression 3.0.
About the author
Marc Owen Jones is Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities at Hamid bin Khalifa University where his research focuses on issues of social justice and the Gulf. He is the co-editor of Gulfization of the Arab World (2018) and Bahrain's Uprising: Resistance and Repression in the Gulf (2015). In addition to his academic work, he contributes to the Washington Post, New Statesman, CNN, the Independent, PEN International, and appears frequently on the BBC, Channel 4 News, and Al Jazeera.
Summary
This rich 100-year modern history of Bahrain uses multiple sources, from freedom of information requests, interviews, and social media data to show how and why the Bahrain regime has used different techniques of political repression to maintain power since the 1920s. With new insights, this book challenges existing knowledge on Bahrain.
