Matar Matar

Matar Ebrahim Ali Matar (also spelled Mattar Mattar; ar, مطر إبراهيم علي مطر; born 3 May 1976) is a Bahraini politician of the Al Wefaq party who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from October 2010 until his resignation in early 2011. Born in the village of Al Daih to a large family with diverse political views, Matar completed his secondary education in Bahrain and moved to Kuwait to pursue higher education. He remained there until 2002 when he returned to Bahrain and joined Al Wefaq political party. Matar was politically active, working within committees in the party and meeting with foreign officials. In 2010, he won with a large margin in the Parliamentary election, becoming the youngest of all MPs and representing the country's largest constituency.

When the Bahraini uprising started in early 2011, Matar joined the protests and gave several interviews to international media. Following government crackdown, he and other party MPs resigned from Parliament. Due to his activism, Matar was arrested by authorities in May. He was allegedly kept in solitary confinement and subjected to torture while in detention before getting tried before a military court. He was released in August and acquitted of charges in February 2012. His arrest, alleged mistreatment and subsequent release triggered several international reactions by international bodies and NGOs such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Inter-Parliamentary Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Following his release, Matar continued his political activism.

Early life and career

Matar was born in Al Daih village, Bahrain on 3 May 1976. His father, Ebrahim is married to three women and has 17 children besides Matar, who is the fifth child out of his mother's seven. The family is diverse in its ideological and political views; some being " leftists, Islamists, Communists, some...conservative and some liberal," said a family member. They are active politicians, most of them members of opposition groups Al Wefaq (Shia) or Wa'ad (secular). As a child, Matar is said to have been shy and intelligent. He studied at Al Razi primary school, then at Jidhafs intermediate school and after that at Noaim secondary school, where he is said to have been a top student.

He traveled to Kuwait to pursue higher education. He earned a Master's degree in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from Kuwait University. When the 1990s uprising in Bahrain began in 1994, Matar left to Kuwait. He returned to Bahrain following a reform process initiated by King Hamad who succeeded his father, Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa. In 2003, Matar married Amal Habib, an ophthalmologist working in Salmaniya Medical Complex. They have a son, Ahmed (born 2007) and a daughter, Sara (born 2008).

Political life

Matar joined Al Wefaq political party in 2002 following his return to Bahrain. He established its Youth Center and became its head. He was also a member of the party's monitoring committee and anti-discrimination committee to which he co-authored a report about discrimination in Bahrain. According to his colleague Khalil al-Marzooq, Matar was active and popular within Al Wefaq. In 2008, he participated in the Leaders for Democracy Fellowship Program in the United States, during which he met Condoleezza Rice, the then-Secretary of State and criticized the U.S. for giving Bahrain "a pass in exchange for hosting the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet's large base." Since 2009, Matar had been working with the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

In October 2010, Matar was successfully nominated by Al Wefaq to the parliamentary election, becoming the youngest Member of Parliament. The constituency he represented, the first of the Northern Governorate is the biggest in Bahrain, having about 16,000 people. In the previous election of 2006, Ali Salman, the head of Al Wefaq who did not run in this election, was elected by the same constitute. Matar won from the first round with a percentage of 85.72.

He became a member of the financial affairs committee where he was an outspoken critic of the military budget. In December, the then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on a visit to Bahrain when Matar asked her to "use America’s influence to reverse a sharp decline in civil rights in the kingdom". "Sometime we feel that there are no red lines or constraints between United States and their allies," he added. Since then, he has become a well-known politician and a "moderate critic of the Sunni-led Bahraini government". In their 2011 documentary, '' Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark'', Al Jazeera English (AJE) described Matar as "the closest thing Bahrain had to a representative leader".

Bahraini uprising

Background

Beginning in February 2011, Bahrain saw sustained pro-democracy protests, centered at the Pearl Roundabout in the capital of Manama, as part of the wider Arab Spring. Authorities responded with a night raid on 17 February (later referred to by protesters as Bloody Thursday), which left four protesters dead and more than 300 injured. In March, martial law was declared and Saudi troops were called in. Despite the hard crackdown and official ban, the protests continued.

Role in uprising

Matar was among protesters in the Pearl Roundabout; he also took part in a number of other protests and encouraged youth to do so. In February, he and 17 other Al Wefaq MPs (the largest bloc) submitted their resignations in protest against the government crackdown on anti-government demonstrations. He was involved in organizing talks with the government. Matar was outspoken against the government's human rights violations, giving interviews to human rights organisations and foreign media including one on 26 April with AJE on the arrest of several health workers and another on 1 May with BBC
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