Arab spring aftermath: media muzzled in brutal crackdown

Just 5km from the gleaming centre of Manama, in Bahrain, a local journalist in a rusted, old compact car swerves around rubbish bins set on fire to deter police cruisers from entering the impoverished, restive Shiite neighbourhoods.

The car stops at a café near a small group of protesters, the embers in Bahrain of the Middle East uprisings known as the Arab spring. The discontent is rarely reported on the local television or radio channels, which are all state-owned, or in the four major daily newspapers, all but one of which are aligned with the Sunni ruling family.

Customers enter the café rubbing their eyes and complaining about another night of tear gas. In a corner, a small group of demoralised Bahraini journalists who are no longer able to safely practise their craft gather to commiserate and pass updates about colleagues in prison or exile.

Reading through the newspapers, former sports reporter Faisal Hayat, 41, takes note of three legal cases against the news media. One is his, a 2007 defamation lawsuit brought against him by a former sports minister. Hayat says it is a nuisance suit to ruin him financially. Then there are charges against a newspaper editor filed by the Ministry of Information. Finally, there is the three-year sentence of blogger and activist Zainab al-Khawaja, aka Angry Arabiya, in part for tearing up a picture of the king in public.

"Three cases in one day?" Hayat says, shaking his head. "This did not happen before 2011."

On February 14, 2011, the full force of the Arab spring reached this tiny Persian Gulf island nation of 1.4 million, which is roughly the size of Hong Kong's New Territories (excluding the islands) and home to the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet. The revolution had begun in Tunisia several months earlier and spread eastwards through 12 countries, forcing out several authoritarian regimes and shaking the confidence of those that held on.