Is there a great deal of tension between young people and the ruling government of Bahrain?
Well first of all, I want to say that young people here definitely appreciate the freedoms we have compared to neighboring countries. If I were living in Saudi Arabia, Iran or the UAE for instance, there are so many things that I wouldn’t be able to get away with. That said, although the government promotes itself to the West as one that fully embraces free speech and progressive policies — it still does not engage with the concerns of young people. All my friends are involved in campaigns, from human rights to environmental issues, but there is a real anxiety that our voices are ignored and that the country is not growing in a way that we can gain from. CNN: What sort of things you do for laughs? Music plays a very big role. One of my best friends is in a metal band so we go to gigs to see him. We have a lot of emerging young musicians who use things like hip hop as a tool for self expression and we love that. We all exchange ideas with them and they take our thoughts as activists an
