Tens of thousands of Bahrainis demonstrated on Friday to demand democratic reforms, stepping up pressure on the US-allied government with the biggest protest yet in a year of unrest.
They began marching along a highway near Manama in response to a call from leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim, who urged people to renew their calls for greater democracy.
A live blog showed images of the protesters carrying banners denouncing “dictatorship” and demanding the release of detainees.
“We are here for the sake of our just demands, that we cannot make concessions over, and we stick with them because we have sacrificed for them,” Qassim said before the march in his weekly sermon in the Shiite village of Diraz.
Qassim and other Shiite clerics led the march.
“It is the biggest demonstration in the past year. I would say it could be over 100,000 [strong],” a news photographer said after protesters filled up the main Budaiya highway in the area of Diraz and Saar, west of Manama.
Later, hundreds of protesters broke away from the march to walk down the main highway into Manama, in an attempt to return to a traffic intersection that protesters occupied for a month during last year’s uprising.
Activists said riot police blocking the road fired tear gas and the interior ministry said protesters threw stones. Clashes continued in the area for over an hour. Activists also reported clashes with police later in the capital’s Makharqa district, as well as in the village of Eker, southeast of the Manama.
However, elsewhere the march wound down peaceably as the majority of protestors streamed home.
The government, pressed by its Western allies to allow peaceful expression of dissent, has allowed more opposition protests in recent months.
A statement from the royal court praised the Qassim march and a small rival rally of several hundred government loyalists under the name “Fateh Gathering” as signs of democratic maturity.
“The events at the Fateh Gathering as well as the gathering in the Northern Governorate are a source of pride for Bahrainis as a model of correct democratic behaviour,” state news agency BNA reported.
Majority Shiites were in the forefront of the protest movement which erupted in February last year after uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
The ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family crushed the protests a month later, imposing martial law and bringing in Saudi and United Arab Emirates troops to help restore order. It accused Shiite power Iran of fomenting the unrest.
Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based, has remained mired in crisis and Sh’ite youths clash daily with riot police. The unrest has slowed the economy in what used to be a major tourism and banking hub.
Tension has risen around the Feb. 14 anniversary of the uprising, with security forces maintaining a tight grip on the intersection formerly known as the Pearl Roundabout, which remains closed.
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