The Ministry of Defense (MoD) is renaming the hall, called Mons, commemorating troops killed in a major World War One battle after king Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain following the cruel ruler’s donation of £3 million to refurbish the hall.
This comes as the country will soon be marking the 100th anniversary of the battle, Mons, which took place in Belgium and left 1,600 UK troops dead.
The outraged British attacked the MoD’s move, saying that the tiny Persian Gulf island nation, which is well-known for severe human rights abuses, is essentially ‘buying silence’. They, meanwhile, noted that the British Army is ‘betraying its dead’, by renaming a war-time memorial after a wealthy brute ruler just for helping it financially.
“There’s something deeply ironic in renaming a hall that was in memory of soldiers who died in a tragic battle in the First World War in honor of a king who is routinely committing human rights abuses,” Labor MP Jeremy Corbyn told British media.
“To change the name of something which commemorates a very tragic episode in British military history, simply because they’re getting a sum of money from a rather dubious source, is appalling,” said Labour MP Andy Slaughter.
Slaughter also chairs the House of Commons all-party ‘Democracy In Bahrain’ group.
“It reflects the appalling double standards the British government and institutions have in relation to the Bahraini regime, which is guilty of all sorts of human rights abuses and fundamentally undemocratic", he added.
The online community also reacted angrily to the move as well.
“I doubt UK will condemn human rights abuses committed by allies whose leaders indirectly fund UK armed forces,” and "Sandhurst endorses mass torturing, child-murdering, iron-fisted dictator" were among the messages posted on Twitter in response to the name change.
Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has come under fire from human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, which slammed the regime for its violent and brutal crackdown on protesters. British-made tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and even live ammunition have been fired on pro-democracy demonstrators, according to the Amnesty International’s latest reports on Bahrain.
Violent clashes broke out recently at the funeral of a teenager, who was killed on Thursday during a rally marking the anniversary of the popular uprising against the ruling monarchy. The procession was blocked and dispersed with stun grenades and tear gas, and several people were injured.
In a clear example of double standards, the UK, U.S. and their Western allies have been reluctant to even criticize the Bahraini regime for its atrocities over the past two years and beyond.
Britain and its fellow members at the European Union have been supplying the al-Khalifa regime with various types of weaponry irrespective of the fact that scores of protesters in Bahrain were being fired on nightly with birdshot and tear gas they had manufactured.
This is while that the UK, France and certain EU states are conspiring behind closed doors to lift an EU embargo barring the supply of weapons to foreign-backed terrorists fighting the popular government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Mons Hall is set to reopen next month, and king Hamad has been invited to attend the ceremony. A plaque will be unveiled with the inscription: ‘King Hamad Hall. This building, the former Mons Hall, was refurbished in 2013 with a generous gift from the Kingdom of Bahrain.’
The Battle of Mons was the first engagement between British and German forces on World War I’s Western Front, beginning on August 23, 1914. The conflict comprised one of the so-called ‘Battles of the Frontier,’ which took place in August 1914. The British found themselves heavily outnumbered by the Germans: 70,000 troops to 160,000, and 300 artillery pieces to 600. The British suffered some 1,600 casualties.