Bahrain, dictatorship and football news update

This video says about itself:

Cameraman Films, Bahrain Police Shoot Him In Body With Gas Canister

19 May 2012

An activist demanding reform of the absolute Bahrain monarchy is shot directly while he raises his camera to film the brutal police who are cracking down against the popular uprising. The Bahrain monarchy appears to finally realise that its days are over, and has essentially given up most of its sovereignty to become a province of neighbouring Saudi Arabia in a new union between the two states.

Washington, D.C. – Human Rights First today called for the immediate release of Sheikh Ali Salman and Ebrahim Sharif, two of Bahrain’s most prominent peaceful political opposition leaders. Ali Salman, the leader of Bahrain’s main peaceful opposition group Al Wefaq, is appealing a conviction on political charges. Sharif, a leader of the opposition group Waad, is currently on trial in Bahrain for comments made during a speech calling for reform. Their next hearings are both scheduled for Thursday, November 12: here.

From the New York Times in the USA today:

FIFA Ethics Review Clears 5 Candidates to Succeed Sepp Blatter

By REBECCA R. RUIZNOV. 12, 2015

ZURICH — Five of the seven men hoping to succeed Sepp Blatter as president of FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, have passed an internal ethics review and have been formally cleared to run in a February election, the group’s electoral committee announced on Thursday. …

The seventh candidate, Michel Platini of France, the head of the European confederation UEFA, submitted paperwork to enter the race on Oct. 8, only hours before he was provisionally suspended by FIFA amid a corruption investigation by the Swiss authorities.

The chairman of the electoral committee, Domenico Scala, has said he will not consider the candidacy of Mr. Platini, who was once regarded as the favorite to replace Mr. Blatter, or perform an ethics review of him until the suspension is lifted. …

But the announcement regarding the remaining five candidates was also not without controversy.

The organization approved Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, president of the Asian soccer confederation and a member of Bahrain’s royal family. Rights activists have accused him of playing a part in the jailing and torture of soccer players from Bahrain who peacefully demonstrated against his family’s rule during the Arab Spring in 2011. …

Rights advocates have held firm. “If FIFA has any hope to move past corruption and scandal, it must begin by disqualifying Sheikh Salman from the presidential race,” Husain Abdulla, executive director of Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain, said in an email. …

The activists specifically charged that Sheikh Salman had led a committee that studied pictures of pro-democracy demonstrations and identified athletes who had participated in them. At least three soccer players, the groups said, were later detained and tortured; upon their release, they were exiled from the Bahrain national team.

“Everything we have presented, from the testimonies of tortured soccer players to the Bahrain Football Association statements, are already on the public record,” Mr. Abdulla wrote in the email. “The crackdown is an incontestable fact.”

THE Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird) slammed Fifa yesterday for adding a “human rights abuser to their profile” after Sheik Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa passed their presidential candidacy integrity check. Khalifa has been accused of being complicit in the detention of footballers and other athletes while head of the Bahrain Football Association: here.

FIFA Ethics Court Bans Former President Sepp Blatter For 8 Years. Michel Platini, who aimed to succeed Blatter as the new president, was also banned: here.

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