An Interview With Bahrain's Blogger-Activist Ali Abdulemam
In the mid 90s, before social media really existed, web developer Ali Abdulemam created and edited a free speech forum which was later used to facilitate Bahrain’s Arab Spring protests. He now lives as a political refugee in London with his wife and three young children. He agreed to sit down with us and tell us his story.
When does your story begin?
My story starts a long time ago, in the 90s. I was an activist in the 1994 uprising and in 1998 I created the bahrainonline website, which is the most visited website in Bahrain during the last decade. It ended when I left Bahrain back in 2013 and arrived in London, so a new phase of my story is beginning here in London.
What was BahrainOnline?
It was a platform that allowed people to express their own opinion, to write their own stories, to write what they think about the future of Bahrain: the reforms they wanted, the kind of rights they are missing. It’s mainly used by the youth. Back in the 90’s we were living under what they call state security law – it’s almost martial law. The authorities can arrest you without any charge or any questions for 3 years, just because they suspect you are a threat to the state. So during that time was when I started the website.
And how popular was the website?
It was the most visited website in Bahrain, until maybe 2012 or ’13. Because it was a site where there’s no limit to what you want to say. You can criticise all the authorities and you can say that you don’t want the king if that’s what you want, if you want to change the constitution you can say that. You can plan your activities, you can plan your campaigns, demonstration, protests, also you can put coverage of videos and pictures of protests on the website.
How did the authorities react to the website?
Well, they were not happy. Since the beginning they started to block the site. In 2005 and in 2010 again they arrested me because of the site. And the site was actually used for the main planning of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain. On that site the youth posted the idea that we need to do an uprising, the day, the place, the chants, the press release for the gathering, the coverage for the protest, all of it come from that site, so the site was the main player for the uprising in Bahrain.
What happened to you when you were arrested in 2010?
I was subjected to torture and threats against my family and was forced to sign a confession without knowing what was in it. I was in isolated for 2 months in a small cell until they put me with two other guys on a judge’s order. We were prevented from sleeping – they would knock with metal on the door just to wake us up in the middle of the night – and we were not allowed to go to the bathroom for long periods at a time.
Those who were torturing us, you can feel that they are not just doing their job to torture you, no: they want to torture you, they feel comfortable when they do this and when they see you suffer, you feel that they are happy. There is an amount of hate in them, I cannot explain or understand it or even know why there is this hate against me because I didn’t meet them before.
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