Page 36 - Records of Bahrain (7) (i)_Neat

22 Records of Bahrain

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proyer - or anything else.
0. All reliablo roporto of the morning's brawl agree

that the police hod no idea of crowd control and no
notion of riot drill| that thoy appeared to be for the
moat part Sunnites thomselvos and so, naturally enough,
thought the best way, to restore order was to hit a
Shiite* The original police dispositions appearto have

been at fault in that, instead of the constables being
between the prooession and the mainly Sunnite crowd, they
were mingled with the prooession and in fact, forced the
outer files of flagellants to the sides of the road
where they oould not but collide with the spectators.

10. The Government hod expected trouble among the
residont Persians, between the pro-Uuoaddiq and the prp-
Zahodi factions, and had made some police dispositions to
provent that. When the brawl among the natives began
the police stopped the Persians from emerging from their

own roa1 tnm where they were assembled, and no Persian was
involved in any of tho trouble.
11. The rest of Sunday passed without any serious
renewal of street fighting, but a most astonishing crop
of rumours sprang up and by Monday morning the Sunnites of

Uuharraq, of Rlfa ash-Sharqi, and other outlying villages
and the Sunnite workers of BAPCO all believed that
members of their rite were being massacred wholesale in
Manama, while the'8hiites of Manama were convinced that
the whole 8unnlte population including the Government
forces were mobilising to finish them off. The leaders

of the Baharina community advised their people to stay
away from work In order to avoid clashes with Sunnite
workora in the some pluoes and secondly to protect their

/families • • •

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