Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): Do we have government agencies that act at the level of state governance, or are we again dealing with a group of boys?

The "martyrdom of a youth named Mohammad Nas" has strained Bahraini society and led to tension and anxiety for a large segment of people, whose relatives and loved ones are imprisoned, while the Ministries of Interior and Health completely denied the issue. The Interior Ministry announced that Nas's name has not been mentioned in the records of the Reformation and Rehabilitation Center. Meanwhile, the Health Ministry stated that there is no deceased under this name.

These statements were deliberately delayed, although the alleged youth's case was brought up multiple times.

There were headlines such as: Arrest of Mohammad Nas upon his return from Malaysia, Mohammad Nas's infection with Coronavirus inside prison, or Nas's deterioration of health and his transfer to intensive care unit. Why didn't the official bodies reveal the truth to the public opinion earlier?

Why didn't that really happen? Because to these apparatuses, the truth is not on their lists of priorities. They also do not consider that reassuring the public is at the heart of their function, but rather creating panic and confusion in society and falsifying facts is their function for which they were established.

These are not just accusations, but there are real inquiries about the conduct of these apparatuses in the Nas case in particular.

The big question is, why didn't the security and health apparatuses actually deny the arrest or transfer of Nas to the hospital? This would have alleviated tension since there has been a pandemic and deaths of other detainees in the same way.

What are the apparatuses that stand behind revealing the information about the alleged youth's death? Who wrote to the Bahrain_dead Instagram page and informed them of his demise? Who texted human rights activist Ibtisam Al-Saegh and informed her of his death and burial in Muharraq without his family's knowledge?

Within the authorities, this game has already been played with Al-Wasat newspaper, when it was flooded with false news during the suppression of protests in March 2011, and the goal was similar: to undermine the credibility of the newspaper and prepare for a change in its editorial board.

These games of disinformation do not challenge the targets, especially given the difficulty of verification, but rather the eligibility of the official authorities who follow these methods. When government agencies work in a childish way, this threatens the stability of society, just for simply scoring points against a newspaper or activist.

The other issue is transparency. The likelihood of passing this test reveals that we are in a country where information is difficult to access, and that what the interior demands to "extract information from its correct sources" cannot be achieved, because, in short, it controls the flow of information and reveals it and obscures it whenever it wants.

This also reveals that people are ready to believe anonymous reporters on social media outlets rather than believing the statements of the Ministry of Interior after it became professional in lying. We can here recall martyr Karim Fakhraoui, who was tortured to death by the Interior Ministry, but it was claimed that he died due to "kidney failure", if we were obtaining information from its alleged "correct sources".

Arabic Version