As the government quietly upgrades the role of Britain’s special forces, their growing global footprint and near-total exemption from democratic oversight should alarm us all, says ROGER McKENZIE
LAST week, in Parliament, I spoke at an event to mark the 12th anniversary of the 2011 uprising, in the presence of some of Bahrain’s most notable and courageous figures in the human rights movement, including Maryam Al-Khawaja, Dr Alaa Alshehabi and Husain Abdulla.
Much of Bahrain’s history has been characterised by remarkable progressive and egalitarian traditions going back a thousand years — a history that has put the people deeply at odds with the authoritarianism they have been forced to live under in recent decades.
And I paid tribute to the guests, as well as to the journalists, academics, prisoners of conscience and others who have fought to extend that legacy despite torture, beatings, imprisonment and repression.
JOE ATTARD explains why trade unionists are rallying in solidarity against the recent arrest of political activists in Gilgit-Baltistan, the northernmost region of Kashmir, administered by Pakistan
Keir Starmer’s £120 million to Sudan cannot cover the government’s complicity in the RSF genocide or atone for the long shadow of British colonialism and imperialism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE



