News stories by Suha Mohammed

It is far from Pearl Roundabout, the scene of last year’s crackdown on pro-democracy protestors, but for now Mughsha, a village in the northern district of Bahrain, serves as the centre of the country’s ‘Arab Spring’ movement.

Bahrain’s by-elections on Saturday are a test of will to see if majority Shias will turn out to vote in areas where they are dominant or heed a boycott call by the powerful opposition Al-Wefaq (Islamic National Accord Association) party.

Bahrain, unlike Egypt with its 83 million people, has a population of only just over a million. And so when protesters settled down to sleep at a central roundabout in capital Manama, the police swooped down and manage to clear them away.