EU, rights groups urge Bahrain to end crackdown on dissidents
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A Bahraini protester throws back a tear gas canister during clashes with regime forces following a demonstration in the village of Bilad al-Qadeem on the outskirts of the capital Manama on February 13, 2015. (Photo by AFP)
The EU and several others states have urged the Bahraini regime to put an end to its heavy-handed crackdown against political dissidents as the Ale Khalifah regime keeps up its policy of repression.
According to Press TV, during a UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session on Wednesday, Slovakia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva Fedor Rosocha, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, voiced concerns “about measures against Bahrain’s opposition political society.”
Brussels is alarmed with the “dissolution of the opposition al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the 9-year-long prison sentence handed down to its Secretary General Sheikh Ali Salman, detention and travel bans on human rights activists, and the re-arrest of Nabeel Rajab,” said the joint statement he read out.
It went on to say that the signatories are troubled by the “revocation of nationality of Bahraini citizens, including prominent figures such as Sheikh Issa Qassim.”
Bahraini authorities revoked Sheikh Qassim’s citizenship on June 20. They had earlier dissolved al-Wefaq besides the Islamic Enlightenment Institution, founded by the 79-year-old cleric, and the al-Risala Islamic Association.
Rosocha further stated that the EU and other world states are “worried about allegations of torture” in Bahrain, and want Manama to extend an invitation to Juan E. Mendez, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Meanwhile, twenty-two NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, have sent letters to 50 states, urging them to pressure Bahraini authorities to release Rajab.
The rights groups asked the addressees to “speak out on Bahrain’s continued misuse of the judicial system to harass and silence human rights defenders.”
Rajab, who has been repeatedly detained for organizing anti-regime demonstrations and publishing Twitter posts deemed insulting to Bahraini officials, was pardoned for health reasons last year, but he was re-arrested on June 13.
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