"I'm in two minds over whether or not to watch the Bahrain Grand Prix if it goes ahead."
What our choice of coffee had to do with a motorsport event taking place on a small desert island in the Persian Gulf which is not generally known for its trade in the brew, I will never know, but he made the statement and I felt it only fair to give my view on the subject.
"Well I'm not. If they decide to go ahead with it then I'm boycotting it. I'm not having it broadcast into my home."
"But what if they send in Human Right's experts and show that the situation is improved there?"
What he was referring to is, of course, the news reports that Bahrain, like much of the Arabic world, has been suffering from a touch of civil unrest. What shocked us both the most was that doctors and nurses who treat pro democracy protestors had been arrested and held for what essentially ammounts to treason. It seemed brutal to us that such people had been arrested for trying to care for humans to whome the powers that be decided shouldn't be treat.
We continued our little debate, about the ethics of holding a a major international event in a country which seemed to be actively persecuting a good proportion of its population. We're terrible arm chair do gooders like that. Ben pointed out that Bernie Ecclestone didn't want to turn F1 political. I argued that by going to a country in which such things are happening, and host an event at which the Bahrain monarchy would inevitably be strutting around on camera and generally spilling their money all over it, then it couldn't help but be political and so they should stay away until the unrest was over. And such has been my opinion, and is my opinion still.
Of course, this weekend the government of Bahrain dropped the state of emergency rule, and the FIA, after a "fact finding mission", decided to reinstate the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Well the fans of course have all gone wild and there are already petitions and facebook pages (ah yes, facebook, the best thing that ever happened to the arm chair do gooder) zooming up against it. And since before the FIA even made a decision, everywhere that F1 is present on the internet there are an alarming number of Bahraini's popping up saying "but everything is fine, don't believe the liers, come back to Bahrain life is good and wondeful here!". Paid propoganda? Many of the other fans certainly seem to think so.
The truth of the matter is, whilst I consider myself to be relatively decently read and I like to keep touch with what's going on in the world, I wouldn't have the foggiest with where to begin on the situation in Bahrain. At first you see the pictures on the television and it screams "police brutality and hostile dictatorship beating down on innocent protestors!" and that is bad. It is always bad. In no world, in no context, is police brutality and hostile dictatorship baring down on innocent bystanders a good thing. As such, this is most people's reason to avoid the Bahrain GP. F1 should not go to a country where these things are actively taking place.
And yes perhaps I'm a hypocrite because I still watch the GP in Turkey and China who are also topping the list of "human rights being squashed here" but the difference is there isn't active civil unrest and disobediance. The fresh taste of blood in Bahrain does not sit comfortably with international fans.
If you go to the F1 company page on facebook you will find little recent activity about F1 in and of itself. It has been completely taken over by what one can only assume is the Bahraini propoganda machine such as I mentioned earlier. If you chose to listen to what people are saying here without stepping aside to think for a moment, without any other source of information, you wouldn't know who or what to believe. Some say that hey, nothing untoward is happening here, everything is fine. Others say pretty much what the news tells us. More say that the protestors are in fact the evil ones, torturing innocents and brutalising students for not taking up arms with them in protest. Then people seem to get even more down and dirty...hey, you, you've sold us out to the Saudi's says one, well you've sold your very soul to the Iranian's is the reply.
And every time someone who is obviously not from Bahrain goes onto the page? They would be instantly jumped upon...you don't know, you're not here, do you even know where Bahrain is? Stupid Americans...believing all those lies. Welcome back, F1!
Desperation? Is there ever smoke without fire?
Clearly, at this point in time, people there are being hurt, oppressed, tortured. Who is the guilty culprit? Does it really matter? Doctors and nurses are being tried in what Amnesty International describes as a "secret military court" behind closed doors, even though the state of emergency has been lowered. Is this an environment into which F1 should be going?
Bahrain is already scheduled to open the 2012 season. Will things have changed by then...I don't know. But this is not a question for now. There are more issues than just the mucky issues of human rights abuses; for one, should the Bahrain GP go ahead then the season will be pushed right back into December. Being that teams begin work in January and usually have a few months off, this would really be stretching things. Then there is the fact that some in Bahrain have said that should the GP go ahead, a day of "rage" will be held in protest on the day of the GP. Whatever the situation may be now, however quiet or "peaceful", that certainly leaves massive potential for security threats for all involved in the race, from drivers to spectators.
All in all, I don't pretend to know all about what's going on in Bahrain, but I do know that for a variety of reasons the race should not go ahead this year. There are reasons why it should, of course, but they are spurious and stink of money hungry business men and monarchs rubbing their hands together.
The government has said it hopes the race will go ahead and will help to unite the people, however the issues there are obviously much deeper than they would appear at first glance. F1 is not the answer to Bahrain's problems, but the problem of Bahrain is certainly one that F1 cannot afford to saddle itself with.
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think?