The “tanks” we’ve been seeing on the news from Bahrain suppressing the democracy protests at the Pearl Square are partially from Dutch origin. The armoured infantry fighting vehicle shown above is a YPR-765, of either Belgian or Dutch origin, sold to Bahrain in the mid-nineties. In total the Netherlands sold 25 of these vehicles, all armed with 25mm guns, as well another 35 M113 armoured personnel carriers, and a couple of support and command vehicles. As seen at the Broekstukken blog (Dutch) it amounted to roughly ten million euros worth of arms delivered to a regime that was far from democratic. This week the inevitable happened and these weapons, supposedly sold to Bahrain for self defence, have been used against Bahrain’s own citizens to keep a despotic regime in power.
Dutch governments over the years have been keen to lecture others on human rights, yet this is just a small example of our own moral failings. It shows that these same governments were quite keen to put profits before human rights when selling off surplus military equipment. Bahrain is not the only country we’ve sold those YPR-765 to: Egypt got 1207 of them from both Belgium and Holland. The Netherlands also sold them to Jordan, while Belgium helped supply Morocco and Lebanon with these vehicles. As long as a country was a loyal ally of America, its human rights record did not matter to our governments.