Bahrainis urge regime change as second protester is buried

Thousands of Bahrainis chanted for a change of regime in the pro-Western Gulf kingdom yesterday as they buried a second protester killed in clashes with police.

After the funeral, large crowds poured on to capital Manama’s Pearl Square, which demonstrators occupied on Tuesday with some erecting tents for the night like their counterparts on Cairo’s Tahrir Square whose 18 straight days of protests triggered the fall of president Hosni Mubarak.

“I slept here. I will sleep here today until our demands are met,” said Hussein Attiyah, 29.

The largest Shiite opposition bloc, meanwhile, said its MPs would not end a boycott of Parliament until measures are taken to establish a real constitutional monarchy in the Shiite-majority country which is ruled by a Sunni royal family.

“The government should be elected by the people who would have the right to hold it accountable,” said Sheikh Ali Salman, the head of the Islamic National Accord Association (INAA).

Sheikh Salman said the INAA and other groups were calling for a demonstration on Saturday in support of the protesters camped out in Pearl Square.

The bloc’s 18 MPs walked out of the 40-member parliament on Tuesday in protest at the killing of two demonstrators in as many days.

Fadel Salman Matrouk was shot dead in front of a hospital on Tuesday where mourners gathered for the funeral of Ali Msheymah, who had died of his wounds after police dispersed a protest east of Manama the previous day.

Echoing slogans which have become popular across the Arab world following uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, mourners chanted: “the people want to overthrow the regime.”

“This is your only and last chance to change the regime,” read a banner carried by the protesters who flocked to Pearl Square after the funeral of Msheymah on Tuesday.

But Sheikh Salman played down such calls, saying they were an immediate and “natural” response to the killing of the two demonstrators, and insisted political reform remained “the main demand”.

Washington said it was “very concerned” over the violence in Bahrain, a staunch ally which hosts the US Fifth Fleet and was the scene of deadly unrest among the Shiite majority in the 1990s. State television aired footage of supporters of King Hamad gathering in Muharaq, outside the capital, brandishing posters of the monarch and Bahraini flags.

Former colonial power Britain expressed concern over reports of the use of excessive force by police and called for further reforms.

“I call on all sides to exercise restraint and refrain from violence,” said the junior foreign minister responsible for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt.

“I welcome the progress that the government of Bahrain has made on political reform in the recent past, but it is essential that this process continues to meet legitimate aspirations for greater political and social freedoms,” he added.

A 2001 referendum paved the way for the restoration of the elected parliament scapped by the authorities in 1975 but its powers are shared with an appointed upper house and the prime minister is still named by the monarch.

In a televised address to the nation on Tuesday in which he expressed sorrow for the protesters’ deaths, King Hamad pledged: “Reform is going ahead. It will not stop.”