Bahrain is now well into its third day of protests. Like in Egypt, groups mobilized by lack of political expression and economic opportunity have taken to the main square of the capital city, Manama. The New York Times reports a jubilant attitude amongst the protesters, which is in contrast to yesterday when protesters angrily denounced the killing of two of their own by police forces.
Bahrain is a monarchy, and controlled by a Sunni minority elite. The country of 1 million people is about 70% Shi’ite. The protesters, though, seem to be playing down the sectarian split in favor of Bahraini nationalism.
Like in Tunisia and Egypt, social media is playing a key organizing role and providing useful updates for outsiders to follow the events in real time. Below is a list of the most reliably informative English language Twitter feeds from Bahrain. #Feb14 and #lulu (an alternate name for Pearl Square) are hashtags used by protesters.
@ealshafei A Bahraini woman who is a TED Global fellow and the director of the youth activism site Mideast Youth.
@MideastYouth The aforementioned youth activist organization.
@JustAmira Amira al Husaini is the Middle East and North Africa editor of Global Voices Online. I’ve followed her work for years.
@ahmedalsairafi I don’t know much about him, but he has posted fervently from Pearl Square and from the hospital where the two people died after being shot by police. He is frequently cited by the others on this list.
@NickKristof He arrived in Bahrain yesterday.
@BahrainRights A twitter feed from the The Bahrain Center for Human Rights.
@RedhaHaji Don’t know too much about this user. He’s written very frequent and descriptive updates from Pearl Square.
Are there others I should include? Please chime in.
Image credit: Crowdvoice.