Carrot-and-stick approach in Bahrain

Police in Bahrain used tear gas to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters marching on the capital yesterday, witnesses said.

The country’s Sunni rulers also moved to mollify the mostly Shiite-led opposition movement by ordering prosecutors to investigate allegations of abuse by the security forces throughout Bahrain’s 10-month-old uprising. The investigation ordered by the interior minister, lieutenant general Sheik Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, covers “all cases related to deaths, torture and inhumane treatment implicating police”.

The move follows the recommendations made last month by a special commission that probed claims of human rights abuses during the uprising, in which at least 35 people, including security force members, were killed.

The commission was authorised in a bid to ease tensions with the majority Shiites, a rare example of an Arab regime subjecting itself to a harsh public reckoning.

It issued a 500-page report documenting torture, the use of excessive force and fast-track trials.