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Developments in Bahrain ahead of the 2013 Grand Prix (57 posts)

Topic tags: 2013 Bahrain Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine said 1 year, 1 month ago:

We had a thread on whether this year’s race would take place, here we continue the discussion for next year’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

As things stand, the 2012 race went ahead with some disruptions during the weekend, not least what happened to Force India.

The wider discussion over whether F1 should be racing in Bahrain continues.

During the race weekend Bernie Ecclestone said the 2013 race would be on the calendar again, but some team bosses such as Ross Brawn voiced a desire for discussions on the weekend that’s just happened.

I expect we’ll have much to discuss here in the coming 12 months.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 1 month ago:

During the race weekend Bernie Ecclestone said the 2013 race would be on the calendar again, but some team bosses such as Ross Brawn voiced a desire for discussions on the weekend that’s just happened.

I see no reason why the race sould not go ahead as planned. It’s still a year away. When Formula 1 was in Bahrain in 2010, did anyone have any idea that within a year there would be mass civilian uprisings that would force the cancellation of the 2011 race? I know I didn’t. So while the uprising in Bahrain might be alive and well in 2013, it also might have ended one way or the other. There’s no way to tell, so I don’t think we can reasonably make a decision on whether or not it could, should or will go ahead 360 days before it actually happens.

As for Brawn’s comments, I read them as being more a call for discussion over the responsibilities of the sport when placed in a situation like this rather than Brawn saying “the race should not have happened and it cannot happen again”.

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matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

I think F1 should wash their hands of the place. It was far too political, not least because the country used F1 in a way it shouldn’t have.

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Keith Collantine said 1 year, 1 month ago:

Channel 4′s journalists, who were deported from Bahrain after being refused permission to cover what was going in the country during the race weekend, have shown some of the footage they shot which wasn’t confiscated by the Bahrain government. It shows some of the government’s efforts to suppress protests during the race weekend:

http://www.channel4.com/news/smuggled-footage-of-bahrain-crackdown

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Keith Collantine said 1 year, 1 month ago:

Reporters Without Borders on how the Bahrain government used the race weekend to manipulate media coverage of the country and blocked journalists who wanted to report on the protests:

Journalists and bloggers convicted by military tribunal during the popular uprising have not had their cases reviewed by civilian courts despite a public commitment by the authorities to do so. Such is the case of the blogger Abdeljalil Al-Singace, director and spokesman of the Al-Haq Movement’s Human Rights Bureau, who was arrested in March last year.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the uprising in February, many foreign journalists were refused entry visas. This occurred again in April at the time of the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix. This was clearly aimed at restricting the number of inconvenient witnesses to the demonstrations and their suppression.

http://en.rsf.org/bahrain-king-hamad-ben-aissa-al-khalifa-02-05-2012,42416.html

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xbx-117 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

Excuse me if I don’t shed a tear over the fact that a herd of agenda-driven journalists were denied the ability to go to the country and write their sensationalist articles. Not that it really stopped them.

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Keith Collantine said 1 year, 1 month ago:

@xbx-117 CNN, Sky News, Channel 4 and others all had journalists barred from entering the country to report on what was happening there, so I don’t see how you can say they weren’t stopped from covering it. The latter managed to get a crew into the country but they were caught and deported.

You may question the integrity of the reporting. I say the media deserve as much scrutiny as the government – but that is no argument to not let them do their job in the first place.

And if you really think the media are the greater evil in this story, your priorities are completely screwed.

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matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

Of course, if proper non-sports journalists had been allowed in it would have both looked like good faith by Bahrain, and those journalists might have written more balanced articles due to having experience of conflicts. The sports journalists who wrote articles wouldn’t have experienced anything like it before, which might have made their stories a little more sensationalist. I find it amazing that somebody can’t see the stifling of the press as a bad thing.

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katederby said 1 year, 1 month ago:

Excuse me if I don’t shed a tear over the fact that a herd of agenda-driven journalists were denied the ability to go to the country and write their sensationalist articles. Not that it really stopped them.

Most likely some “sensation seeking” journalists were kept out but so were fair minded, serious political news journalists. Which is why Sports journalists took on a role they may not have been ideally suited but by banning news journalists there was no alternative.

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Asanator said 1 year, 1 month ago:

Didn’t exactly look like a mass civilian uprising as we have seen over the rest of the middle east did it? More like a select few angry men lobbing molotovs at the police. I wonder how the UK police and armed forces would react to a sustained assault by what appears to be a very small group of ‘demonstrators’. Break out the tear gas and the rubber bullets perhaps?

It all seems very sensationalist to me when everybody knows the King is trying to effect change, however these things do tend to take time. With ‘reporting’ like that it is no wonder that the Bahraini government restricted media access.

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matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

@asanator Except that as I said, restricting media access was likely to cause more sensationalism.

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Funkyf1 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

This should not even be a topic, unless you are trying to incite unrest, you cannot predict or control the future, nor will you do anything to resolve or enforce the situation. Let it be or be part of it.

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matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

“you cannot predict or control the future”
Doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed, and the topic updated with developments in the country.

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Funkyf1 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

This an F1 site correct? I’d prefer it not to be used for ventures in journalism. As stated if you have a interest the country, go do something about it, otherwise let it be.

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matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

Except that the situation in Bahrain is intrinsically linked to whether a race next year could.should happen. It is a single forum topic you could ignore? There are plenty of completely non-F1 topics in the forum.

‘As stated if you have a interest the country, go do something about it, otherwise let it be.’
Thank you for telling me that if I’m concerned about any foreign affairs, I’m not actually allowed to be unless I actively campaign.

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