DUBAI: Hundreds of Bahraini protesters kept up their rally on Thursday outside the home of a Shia leader, a day after they chanted a promise to “give our soul and blood as a sacrifice” to protect him following the government’s move that revoked his citizenship this week.

The demonstration in support of Sheikh Isa Qassim shows the unrest gripping the tiny island of Bahrain, sparked by an intense government crackdown on opposition groups and dissent, on a level unseen since its 2011 Arab Spring protest.

But while the protests five years ago saw the country’s Shia majority and others rise up to demand more political freedom from its Sunni rulers, this crackdown has seen a growing level of sectarianism. A top general in Iran has threatened the “destruction of the bloodthirsty regime” in Manama while anti-Shia messages have spread around social media.

“The country now has been divided and you have to say the government bears a lot of responsibility,” said Brian Dooley, the director of the Washington-based group Human Rights First. “The targeting of the theological side of things, I think, is particularly worrying.”

The government in Bahrain, which is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, crushed the Arab Spring protests with the help of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Since then, the island has seen low-level unrest, protests and attacks on police.

On Tuesday, authorities stripped Sheikh Isa of his citizenship, accusing him of creating an extremist sectarian atmosphere and forming groups that “follow foreign religious ideologies and political entities”, an apparent reference to Iran.

His supporters and activists deny the allegations. His case is the latest in a string of incidents since Bahrain’s Defence Force announced in April it was “ready to deal firmly and with determination with these sedition groups and their heads” after a petrol bomb killed a police officer.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2016