Bahrain Mirror: The public relations director in Bahrain's Ministry of Education, Fawwaz Al-Shorouqi, denied there is a practice of discrimination against high school graduates with regards to the scholarships distributed by the ministry to top-rank students, accusing "the parties that are launching campaigns against scholarship distribution," pretending to "defend the students' interests, while they in fact are making use of the emotions of students who were not granted special majors like medicine in order to doubt the process of scholarship distribution and show as if the ministry is discriminating against some students."

Al-Shorouqi strongly criticized these parties without naming them, stressing: "If these parties were concerned about the interests of students, why didn't they issue a statement to denounce targeting schools by setting them on fire, sabotaging them, hurling Molotov cocktails at them, locking their doors with chains and blocking the streets from students by bricks and trees trunks? Why didn't they launch campaigns denouncing the suspension of schools, preventing the children from their right in education, intimidating them, dragging them from their classes to the streets to participate in political protests", claiming that "the ministry works to serve the citizens and will not be subject to political blackmail".

As for the study abroad and regular scholarships, Al-Shorouqi said "the top students who were not granted study abroad scholarships can compete to gain the available ones that were recently announced" without mentioning additional details. He said that those top students were granted only regular scholarships due to what he described as "not adhering to the registration in the 12 options of scholarships." They only registered their names in two or three options and they put all their preference in only one specialty. Thus, when the electronic program rejects the speciality that the student chose to study, the study abroad scholarship will automatically turn into a regular one," he added.

It is worth mention that the statement of the public relations director is the first of its kind after the campaign in which thousands of tweeters participated, expressing their discontent with the discrimination exercised against the top-rank high school graduates who belong to the Shiite majority in the country, regarding the distribution of scholarships.    

The Arabic Issue