Bahrain treads lightly

People fighting and dying for rights that we take for granted, hardly wanting to see the drama unfold!

IGOR, if last years British GP had coincided with the riots that we had in August, should we have cancelled it?

Go-Bates-Go the only rights those rioters were after was a right to free trainers from Sports Direct.

Also; despite behaving like animals, they received a fair trial.

All in all, an utterly ridiculous comparison to make.

hazsa19

To be honest, if we cancelled every event for political or humanitarian reasons, we wouldn't have a GP calendar worth the paper its printed on. Every country that holds an F1 race has got serious side issues, most are covered up behind closed doors, but do we really need to use a Sport as a notice board ?

Brazil has not got what I would call a great humanitarian record, but we still race there, China too, but there has to be a dividing line between what constitutes a viable platform for protest and acceptable levels of participation in world events.

Either that or we should all boycott ourselves with each other on all fronts, import/export, political recognition, monetary loans, immigration/emigration, religious beliefs, you name it, it all comes under the umbrella of protest if we let it.

Well said Spriteful (U1917)

Bahrain has been hosting a F1 race since 2004 and no one complained back then about Bahraini human rights.

The comparison that goBatesGo made with riots in Britain is a valid one. It is a pity that the British, in the main, are not particularly sufficiently well educated to understand the human rights history of their own country.

Why are people on this forum singling out Bahrain for criticism and ignoring the political situations in other countries? Is China OK but Bahrain not?

I am not an expert in Shia political ambitions in Bahrain but human rights are the last thing that they are fighting for. The Bahrain ruling elite introduced a political system whereby half of the parliamentary seats were decided by popular vote including women. Unfortunately most people voted for introducing repressive anti female legislation.

What should be the criteria for allowing a country to host a sporting event? Should these countries be allowed to participate in the Olympics?

As a British citizen I have to be careful about what I post. I might be extradited by the Americans, held without trial, sent to Guantanamo Bay, waterboarded and then extraordinary renditioned to a country not hosting a sporting event. I would then miss the US Grand Prix.

Whilst the Human Rights aspect between Bahrain and UK are not comparable, the only team that failed to turn up to FP2 did so because a team vehicle was caught up in the violence. My point is if there had been riots near Silverstone last year and a team was caught up in it would the absence have been repeated?
Back to the human rights issue, as Spriteful & WTBCU said, China has Human Rights issues far worse than Bahrain, just kept quiet, but did anyone call for that race to be cancelled? NO.
Pure hypocrisy.

Peer pressure GBG, Bahrain is not exactly the centre of political commerce, so no-one is afraid to raise issues with them, just a little island in the middle of nowhere.

It speaks volumes that they are able to voice there protests, but one has to wonder where the crackerjacks come from or who instigated the protests in the first place. Internal or external support and leadership.