Three years of violent protests in Bahrain has elevated
the island kingdom to one of the most dangerous locations to be a police
officer, according to an analysis by local daily Gulf Daily News.
Police in Bahrain are 116 times more likely to die in the
line of duty than they are in the UK and eight times more likely than US
officers, who face widespread gun ownership, according to the per capita death
rate of serving officers during 2011-2013.
Twelve Bahraini police officers have died and 2,300 have
been injured on the job since anti-government protests broke out in March 2011,
according to police statistics.
Three officers died in one attack Monday last week.
They were killed when a bomb exploded in Daih in what was the single deadliest
attack on police since unrest began.
It came only two weeks after policeman Abdulwaheed Al
Balooshi, a 29-year old father-to-be, died from injuries he suffered in a
series of bombings targeting police on February 14, the third anniversary of
the uprising.
The GDN calculated that one policeman had died for every
325,000 Bahraini residents each of the past three years.
During the same period, a total of five British police
officers had been killed in the line of duty – or one officer for every 37.8m British residents each year.
In the US, 374 officers had died in the past three years,
equating to one officer per nearly 2.5m US residents each year.
Bahrain is the only GCC nation to experience violent
anti-government protests since the Arab Spring.
The Shia-dominated opposition is calling for a
constitutional monarchy and equality in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Talks between parties have repeatedly stalled.
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