Bahrain has been the site of several anti-war, pro-Iraq and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks.

MANAMA, January 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – A Bahraini rights group employee was sacked by her organization for contacting the U.S. embassy and asking for help in the group's campaign for a new personal status law, a UAE newspaper reported Wednesday, January 22.

The Gulf News reported that the committee, formed last year to lobby the government and members of parliament for a new pro-women rights personal status law, has "disowned" the member Badriya Rabiah, after “learning of her meeting with two embassy officials, group leader Ghada Jamsheer said.”

Explaining the matter, the Gulf News quoted Jamsheer saying that the issue is of a “national” nature and doesn’t concern “any foreign country.”

“Badriya thought she could speed matters up by asking the Americans for support," Jamsheer explained, reported the paper, adding that Jamsheer also pointed out she had told Badriya previously not to contact the American embassy or any other foreign mission.

"How can she ask support from a country that has backed Israel and wants to attack Iraq," she added, reported Gulf News.

"The Americans are preparing for a war on Iraq without the least regard for Islamic and Arab public opinion," said Ghada, who also said her group was against the presence of U.S. forces and the U.S. embassy in her country, added Gulf News.

’American colonizer’

Bahrain, a major non-NATO ally of Washington and home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet as well as thousands of U.S. military personnel, has been the site of several anti-war, pro-Iraq and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks.

On January 17, around 3,000 people took to the streets of the Bahraini capital Manama to protest a looming U.S.-led war on Iraq and demonstrate opposition to U.S. military bases in the region, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

"The American is a colonizer who has come to cause destruction!", "From Baghdad to Bahrain, one people and not two, from Baghdad to Ras al-Roman, everyone against the Americans!" The protestors chanted, in reference to the Ras al-Roman mosque in east Manama where the protest was staged after weekly Muslim prayers.

"No U.S. bases in Muslim countries!" The demonstrators thundered, waving Bahraini, Iraqi and Palestinian flags.

Lawmakers, leaders of political groupings and human rights advocates led the protest.

"This demonstration is a message of protest against the policy of the United States, which seeks to exercise its domination over the world," said Sheikh Ali Salman, head of the main Shiite Muslim grouping, the Islamic National Accord Association (INAA).

"We also want to express our opposition to the use of U.S. bases in our country in a strike on Iraq," Sheikh Ali told AFP.

Last March, Bahrainis staged a series of demonstrations against Israel and Washington's support for the Jewish state after Israeli forces launched a large-scale military offensive in the West Bank.

And on April 5, a man died and more than 100 people were injured during a demonstration in which some 20,000 mostly Bahraini protesters took part and during which stones and petrol bombs were lobbed at the U.S. embassy in Manama.