Bahraini regime behind Internet disruption in Diraz: Rights group

The Internet slowdown in the Bahraini village of Diraz, home to a leading religious scholar, appears to be ordered by the Manama regime in a bid to disrupt peaceful protests there, says a monitoring and advocacy group.

According to the reports, in a report published on Thursday, Bahrain Watch suggested that the kingdom may have forced Batelco and Zain, two of the island country's main telecommunication companies, to throttle Internet access in Diraz.

On June 20, Manama revoked the nationality of Ayatollah Sheikh Qassim, with regime’s Interior Ministry accusing the clergyman of seeking the “creation of a sectarian environment” through his connections with foreign powers.

Sheikh Qassim the spiritual leader of al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, Bahrain’s main opposition group, whose activities were recently suspended by the ruling Aal-e Khailfa regime.

Demonstrators have held sit-ins outside the cleric’s house to denounce his citizenship removal.

However, locals have complained about poor Internet access in Diraz in recent weeks as well as a heavy police presence.Each night, between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m. local time, online traffic slows to less than a crawl on mobile phones and some fixed-line Internet connections, according to the Bahrain Watch report.

“Our experiments show ... certain 3G and 4G cell towers belonging to Batelco and Zain appear to be turned off and 2G cells broadcast notifications to phones indicating that mobile data services are not supported,” the report said, adding that there was also “a device on Batelco’s Internet backbone that disrupts certain Internet traffic to and from Diraz.”

SS