Bahrain Mirror

Dear Madam,
While you are reading the UNESCO and its partners' letter to launch the World Teachers' Day celebrations, we would like to talk to you about us and our teachers in Bahrain in 2011.

We are not well, although we know that your mission is to realize the good in the world. We know that you consider education as a way to realize the good in modern society. We are not well as our education manipulated by politics that does not seek the common good for the people.

On 6th October, the world celebrates the World Teachers' Day. It is celebrating their mission in realizing the good. The teachers in my country, since the nineties of the last century, have celebrated the mission of the good every year. They struggled immensely to schedule that day on the Ministry of Education's calendar; however, the Ministry of Education has not recognized that effort, but it worked on surrounding them in it its evil snare.

The good is not realized by imposing the regime options. The good prospers in the freedom of choice. For that reason the modern education has thrived since the renaissances to implement the most important mission which is enabling the individuals of their freedom of choice.

Our teachers participated in the 14th February uprising to learn together with their people the lesson of freedom and choice through the peaceful protests. They demanded their political rights that affirmed their individual opinion and choice. Their choice demanded an elected government; they did not want a Prime Minister that held the position for more than forty years. They did not want a military Minister of Education, who managed the promotions of the ministry's employees according to their sectarian and religious affiliations, their personal loyalty to his government and their loyalty to the political streams loyal to the government.

Ms. Irina Bokova,

Did you know how that military Minister retaliated against the teachers? It was a devastating revenge not only of the teachers, but of the teachers, the administrators, the headmasters and the specialists, and most importantly he avenged of education, the education that they struggled for, the education of free choice and of common good.

His retaliation campaign left our education schools: nobody trusts the other; the teachers are frightened in their schools, and the informers work to avenge of anyone who talks about freedom, democracy, elected government or civil state. The students are afraid of their classmates who are of different sect. The lady teachers are afraid even to talk in their closed rooms. It is required of everyone not to represent their real roles, but to represent what that Minister wants.

That military McCarthyism Minister follows up his McCarthyism committees to satisfy his revenge instincts. He does not have an educational mission. He is talented to work according to the martial laws. He is not aware of the educational concept of the civil citizenship. According to him, the students are projects for artificial loyalty to those who are in power. He arranges their ranks every year in the national stadium to chant his masters' names as they were the homeland. When the teachers chose the Pearl Roundabout, to be the school where the students learned the concept of the homeland which was absent of the curriculum of that Minister, their retribution was detention, torture, sacking, marital tribunals, the penal committees, questioning and defamation.k

Ms. Irina Bokova,

Do you want to know how that Minister lies? Do you want to know how he affirms lying and deprives us of learning honesty in talk and practice?Please read his letter that the press published on 6 October 2011, the World Teachers' Day, he said: "The appreciation for the teachers is not only for the vital role they play in disseminating knowledge, but it stems from their role in building values and positive attitudes toward the self, the religion, the country and the national identity, and teaching the students living together, cooperation, love, and tolerance in their small society which is the school, and what unites them all in their homeland which is the Kingdom of Bahrain.

However his practices are: dismissal of scores of the Ministry of Education (MoE) employees, questioning them and casting doubt of their nationalism at committees that the Minister himself formed. MoE claims that it only fired 79 employees; however, the General Federation of Workers Trade Unions in Bahrain says that there are 167 MoE employees either suspended or dismissed of work. There are salary cuts of those suspended or punished. MoE has dispensed with of a number of illiteracy teachers. The punishment comprised scores of the leading educational specialists, their employment grades have been demoted and their field of work has been changed.

With the cooperation of that Minister, the Minister of Social Development and Human Rights Ms. Fatima Al-Balushi has dissolved the board of the Teachers' Society, arrested its members and tortured them in jails. The Amnesty International has demanded the release of the Teachers' Society members; however, the government sentenced the chief of the Teachers' Society Mr. Mahdi Abudeeb to ten years imprisonment, and sentenced his deputy Ms. Jalila Al-Salman to three years. Both of them had been subjected to severe torture.

Ms. Irina Bokova,

Do we exaggerate when we say we are not well, and will not be well?

Ms. Irina Bokova,

If you are not able to support our teachers, please support our education. Please say something so that our education restores its good, otherwise it has no good.

To UNESCO Director-General Ms. Irina Bokova