Bahrain Tears Down Pearl Monument

Bahrain Tears Down Pearl Monument


Bahrain tore down the protest movement’s defining monument on Friday, the pearl at the center of Pearl Square. The destruction of the 300-foot sculpture, a stone pearl held by six sweeping arches, was part of a chain of events that in a matter of days turned the country from a symbol of hopeful pro-democratic protest into one of repression.


The official Bahrain News Agency reported the change as a “face-lift” to “boost the flow of traffic.” But Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said at a news conference, “We did it to remove a bad memory.” He added of the monthlong antigovernment rallies: “The whole thing caused our society to be polarized. We don’t want a monument to a bad memory.”

Pearl Square had become a tent camp with free food and a carnival atmosphere modeled on Tahrir Square in Cairo. But Bahraini troops forcefully cleared it on Wednesday. In removing the sculpture, the country cost itself a landmark designed to honor the six gulf states whose economic life was based, before oil, on pearls. The six, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, make up the Gulf Cooperation Council — which sent in 2,000 troops in a show of force just before Bahrain’s own security forces moved to crush the protests.

Whether the Pearl Monument’s destruction — coming after the rout in the square and arrests of opposition figures — represented a definitive death blow for the protest movement was unclear. But even as it was being removed, the funeral of one of the antigovernment activists killed this week offered a different kind of symbol.

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