Eight years ago this month, the wave of pro-democracy protests that came to be known as the Arab Spring reached Bahrain, where a brief flowering of dissent against the Gulf monarchy that hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet was stifled in a bloody crackdown, backed by troops from neighboring Saudi Arabia. Dozens of protesters, drawn largely from the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, were gunned down in broad daylight by security forces. Despite such outrages, Bahrain’s royal family, bolstered by the presence of the U.S. Navy. Those protesters are still in danger.
— source theintercept.com | Feb 2 2019