MANAMA, Feb 15, (Agen-cies): Thousands of Bahrainis demonstrated in the capital Manama on Tuesday demanding regime change in the Gulf kingdom after two protesters were killed in clashes with police.
The protests in a country, which saw deadly unrest in the 1990s between the majority Shiite population and the Sunni ruling family, prompted Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone to voice concern about next month’s Bahrain Grand Prix which opens the new Formula One season.
“This is your only and last chance to change the regime,” read a banner carried by protesters who descended on Manama’s Pearl Roundabout, shortly after the funeral of one of the two Shiite demonstrators.
The banners and slogans of the Bahraini protesters echoed those of the demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square whose 18 straight days of protest triggered the dramatic end on Friday of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.
Cyber activists outraged by the killing of the two protesters had called for the Manama demonstration on Facebook. MPs from Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition bloc walked out of parliament.
Protesters appeared to have turned a deaf ear to King Hamad, who addressed the nation earlier expressing sorrow for the deaths and announcing a ministerial investigation.

Some protesters erected a tent, saying their sit-in will continue until their demands are met.
Demonstrators want a “contractual constitution and a peaceful transfer of power,” said MP Mohammed Mezaal, of the Shiite opposition Islamic National Accord Association, whose 18 MPs walked out of the 40-member parliament.
The decision came because of “the deterioration in security and the negative and brutal way in which (authorities) dealt with the protesters, killing two of them,” said another of the bloc’s MPs, Khalil al-Marzooq.
Fadel Salman Matrouk was shot dead in front of a hospital on Tuesday where mourners gathered for the funeral of Ali Msheymah who died of his wounds after police dispersed a protest in a village east of Manama on Monday, Marzooq said.
He described both men as “martyrs.”
King Hamad said he would continue the reform process which saw the restoration in 2002 of the parliament dissolved in 1975. The Shiite opposition has long complained that the elected chamber’s legislative authority is shared with an appointed upper house.

“Reform is going ahead. It will not stop,” the king said.
The interior ministry said “some of the people participating in the funeral on Tuesday clashed with forces from a security patrol,” leading to Matrouk’s death.
It also announced the death of a protester late on Monday “due to his wounds” and opened an inquiry into whether police resorted to “unjustified use of arms” in Diya village.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay was in no doubt that the force used had been disproportionate.
“I urge the authorities to immediately cease the use of disproportionate force against peaceful protesters and to release all peaceful demonstrators who have been arrested,” she said.
Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa director Malcolm Smart said: “This second killing within two days is both tragic and a very worrying development.
“Like many in the region, those in Bahrain who feel their dignity has been compromised are demanding change. The authorities must listen to these calls, rather than retaliating with violence,” the London-based watchdog said.

News of the two deaths prompted activists, who posted pictures of both men on a Facebook page, to call for a huge turnout at their funerals.
Thousands attended Msheymah’s funeral in Diya, some chanting that “the people want to oust the regime.”
The Formula One chief told London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that it was too early to consider the possibility of calling off next month’s Bahrain Grand Prix but said he planned to contact Crown Prince Salman about the risk of protests.
“The danger is obvious, isn’t it?” Ecclestone told the paper’s online edition. “If these people wanted to make a fuss and get worldwide recognition it would be bloody easy, wouldn’t it?”
Washington, which uses Bahrain as home base for its Fifth Fleet, said it urging its allies in the Middle East to open up their peoples like Egypt.
“We have sent a strong message to our allies in the region saying let’s look at Egypt’s example, as opposed to Iran’s example,” President Barack Obama said.

Egypt
Egypt’s military said on Tuesday it hoped to hand over to an elected government in six months, but the Muslim Brotherhood said ending emergency law and freeing political prisoners would build a “bridge of confidence”. Rumours swirled about Hosni Mubarak’s health. Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said it was deteriorating and the deposed president had refused to go abroad for treatment.
A military source said Mubarak, 82, believed to be in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, was “breathing”. Another Egyptian source with links to the family said he was not well.
The military’s remarks on the transition, carried by the state news agency, were the clearest sign since Mubarak quit on Friday that the generals were committed to a swift time frame for fulfilling their promises of elections and democracy.
But the Islamist Brotherhood, echoing the demands of pro-democracy activists and reformists, said it wanted the military to carry out further steps immediately.

“We, together with the entire nation ... are in need of a bridge of confidence between the army and the people,” Essam al-Erian, a senior Brotherhood member, told Reuters, referring to lifting emergency law and releasing political prisoners.
On a public holiday for the Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) birthday, Egypt paused for breath as the army sought to calm revolutionary fervour and get the country back to work. A dust storm deterred protests that have flared since Mubarak quit on Friday.
Facing a rash of pent-up labour demands from groups ranging from bank staff and tour guides to policemen and steelworkers, the new military rulers have urged people not to disrupt further an economy jolted by the 18-day uprising against Mubarak.
The central bank said banks would remain closed on Wednesday and Thursday after being closed on Monday because of strikes.
In another sign of potential damage to the economy, Arafa Holding, Egypt’s biggest garment exporter, said on Tuesday it had closed its factories in Tenth of Ramadan City, in the desert outskirts west of Cairo, till Feb 17 due to strikes.
Some secular leaders fret that racing into presidential and parliamentary elections in a nation where Mubarak suppressed most opposition activity for 30 years may hand an edge to the Brotherhood, the best-organised political group.

“The Higher Military Council expressed its hope to hand over power within six months to a civilian authority and a president elected in a peaceful and free manner that expresses the views of the people,” an armed forces statement said.
“The council affirmed that it does not seek power, that the current situation was imposed on the armed forces and that they have the confidence of the people.”
A committee headed by an independent judge that met on Tuesday has been given 10 days to draft amendments to the constitution. The plan is to then put these to a referendum.
As the upheaval in Egypt sent shockwaves around the Middle East, troubling global financial markets jittery about oil supplies, clashes broke out in Bahrain and Yemen, neighbours of the world’s biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia.
Existing political groupings are mostly weak and fragmented. The Muslim Brotherhood, which under the now-suspended constitution could not form a party, may be the most cohesive group but its true popularity has yet to be tested.

“When the popular demand for the freedom to form parties is realised, the group will found a political party,” the Brotherhood said in a new statement.
Signalling the transformation in Egypt, state television aired an interview with the Brotherhood’s Erian, something unimaginable in the Mubarak era.
The Brotherhood is an Islamist group founded in the 1920s with deep roots in Egypt’s conservative Muslim society. Washington has expressed concern about its “anti-American rhetoric” and said it has serious disagreements with it.
Pro-democracy leaders plan a big “Victory March” on Friday to celebrate the revolution — and perhaps also to remind the military of the power of the street.
Uncertainty remains over how much influence the military will seek to exert in reshaping a corrupt and oppressive ruling system which it has propped up for six decades.
The military has promised free and fair elections, suspended the constitution and dissolved parliament, dismantling parts of the apparatus that kept Mubarak in power after he replaced Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by Islamist radicals in 1981.

Assets
EU ministers tackled an Egyptian request to freeze the assets of leading members of deposed president Hosni Mubarak’s regime Tuesday, but stopped short of tough immediate action.
“We discussed the subject,” said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble before he left similarly inconclusive talks among counterparts on closer economic integration.
“The Egyptian government has lodged a request with several states, ourselves included, and we are looking into it,” he went on. “This will be decided quickly.”
A spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, who was on a visit to Israel and the West Bank, said the issue would go to European Union foreign ministers at scheduled Sunday evening talks.
Britain’s finance minister George Osborne pushed the issue over a breakfast meeting in Brussels, a senior EU source said, but a bid to get all 27 states to sign up to a political statement stalled.
With foreign security experts picking up the debate, France said it would place accounts — including Mubarak’s own — under heightened surveillance, applying extra “vigilance.”
Britain, Germany and France were each asked by Egypt to freeze the assets of former regime officials — although not the deposed president himself.
British foreign minister William Hague on Monday pointed to the similar course of action taken with Tunisia, whose president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled last month in a popular revolt which lit the fuse for the mass protests that deposed Mubarak.

Tunisia
Tunisia extended a state of emergency that has been in place since the country’s long time autocratic president was overthrown during an uprising last month, while it ended the curfew imposed during the deadly protests, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday.
The curfew was in place since Jan 13, the day before President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia in the wake of clashes between police and protesters angry about unemployment, corruption and repression. A United Nations mission has said at least 219 people were killed in the unrest — including dozens in prison fires — while 510 were injured.

The curfew’s hours had gradually been reduced in ensuing weeks. Most recently, it prevented people from walking outside or driving from midnight until 4 am.
The state of emergency, declared Jan 14, forbids any public street gathering of three people or more, though that rule has rarely been enforced. It also authorizes police and security forces to use their weapons against suspects who do not turn themselves in when ordered to do so, and against fleeing suspects who cannot be apprehended.
Life in Tunisia has largely returned to normal as a caretaker government tries to stabilize the country ahead of elections, supposed to take place later in 2011. Stores, markets, gas stations and schools have reopened, and people have returned to work.
The marauding gangs of suspected regime loyalists who pillaged homes and businesses in the early days of upheaval have mostly faded away, though sporadic incidents persist in some areas.
Tunisians found the experience of forcing out their president so exhilarating that it is proving difficult for them to stop. A month after a tide of popular protests pushed authoritarian leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from office, many people are taking the principle of people power and applying it to ever corner of their life.

Hotel workers have refused to clean guests’ rooms until they get more pay, telecoms workers threatened to strike over a plan to privatise their company, and disgruntled airport workers have halted international flights.
School pupils protested against their teachers, and then the teachers rallied outside the education ministry to complain that the pupils were being allowed to run wild.
“People seem to have misunderstood what liberty is really about,” said Nejmeddine, a businessman in the Tunisian capital.
“They just seem to want to do whatever they please and if you try to say anything to them they just say: ‘I’ll set myself on fire’,” he said, a reference to the self-immolation by jobless man Mohamed Bouazizi which started the revolution.
Some people in Tunisia say the discovery of personal freedom should be celebrated after two decades spent living in a repressive police state. But others worry about the impact on the spluttering economy.
Trade ministry data showed that the value of exports in January fell by 1.5 percent compared to the same period last year. “If a few weeks of reduced activity are manageable, a longer period will be dramatic,” the ministry said.

Yemen
Pro-regime supporters armed with batons and stones waded Tuesday into a crowd of anti-government protesters trying to march on Yemen’s presidential palace, sparking clashes dispersed by police.
At least three people were injured as the rivals pelted each other with stones, said an AFP correspondent, in the fourth straight day of protest in central Sanaa.
Inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, protesters estimated to number 3,000 poured out of Sanaa University to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years.
“The people want to oust the regime” they chanted, picking up the slogan used by demonstrators in Egypt who forced president Hosni Mubarak to step down last Friday after 18 days of mass protests.
As they advanced on Saleh’s palace, supporters of the president’s General People’s Congress armed with batons and stones confronted the demonstrators, who responded by hurling stones.

The president’s supporters notably tried to attack opposition MP Ahmed Saif Hashed, who took part in the protest, but he was protected by fellow marchers, witnesses said.
Demonstrators said police sided with the pro-Saleh militants in dispersing the crowd.
International human rights watchdogs have criticised the conduct of the police, including the alleged use of electar Tasers.
But cyber-activist Hashem al-Abara, involved in organising the protests in the Arab world’s poorest country through Facebook, said the demonstrators would not be intimidated.
“We will continue with the protests and the ruling party’s attacks against our peaceful demonstrations will not set us back,” Abara said. “If Egypt stayed 18 days, it will not matter to us if we stay one, two or three months.”

As tensions soared outside his palace, Saleh announced that his office was open “to listen to the views” of “various segments of society from all the republic’s provinces.”
“These direct meetings between the president and people from various social segments will provide the chance to discuss all the developments and ... listen to different views ... to serve the country,” the state news agency Saba said.
On Monday, rocks and batons flew in the capital as the protesters — mainly students and lawyers — clashed with police and Saleh’s supporters. Police also attacked protesters in Sanaa on Sunday.
In Taez, south of Sanaa where anti-Saleh demonstrators staged protests on Tuesday for a fourth day, similar clashes erupted with regime loyalists, with no casualties reported after eight people were hurt on Monday.
The Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders condemned on Tuesday what it called attacks on journalists covering the protests.
“RSF roundly condemns the attacks that security agents, police officers and plainclothes men have carried out against journalists covering street protests in Sanaa during the past two days,” it said.
It urged “Yemeni authorities to allow journalists to do their work without fear of being arrested or physically attacked by members of the security forces, who are supposed to protect them.”

Also:
CAIRO: The London-based Gulf Dialogue Forum says intense contacts are under way among Saudi activists and scholars to form a political party in the oil-rich monarchy.
The online forum said Tuesday the National Saudi Party advocates establishing a civil democratic government because of the recent turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt.
Last week, Sheik Mohammed bin Ghanim al-Qahtani and nine university teachers, political activists and businessmen said they formed a party of their own, the Umma Islamic Party.
There has been no official reaction to either announcement.
Political activity in Saudi Arabia is severely circumscribed and all power rests in the hands of the ruling Saudi family.