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The Obama administration was very instrumental in their coming, to prevent the possibility of emerging democracy in Bahrain or elsewhere in the region.
News of the intervention, however, brought larger crowds to the streets. They occupied the Pearl Roundabout, set up barricades against vicious attacks, and persisted against fierce repression.
On April 1, Bahrain's al-Wefaq party, its largest anti-government opposition, claimed security forces arrested over 300 protesters since mid-March, dozens still missing. Prominent blogger, Mahmoud al-Youssef, was among the disappeared, taken into custody on March 30.
Tanks were positioned at prominent sites. Police checkpoints were set up throughout the country. Unidentified gangs, believed to be plainclothes security forces, conducted nighttime raids on homes in poor Shiite neighborhoods. Residents reported assaults and confiscations of their property.
In short order, Pearl Roundabout protesters were violently routed. Since mid-February, perhaps dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and many more arrested, tortured, and disappeared.
Bahrain Human Rights Center (BHRC) head Nabeel Rajab said several dozen masked men raided his home in mid-March, "threaten(ing) to rape me and one man was touching my body. They hit me with shoes and punched me with fists. They were insulting me, saying things like, 'You're Shiite so go back to Iran.' "
Blindfolded and arrested, he was beaten for two hours, then released. Another gang returned a few days later, threatening him and journalists present at the time. Extreme repression quelled protests and strikes, but anti-regime opposition persists. One man fired from his teaching job said:
"We cannot stop. We might go quiet for a bit to mourn the dead and treat the injured and see those in jail, but then we will rise up again."
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