Human rights groups say security forces continue to torture detainees
The government of Bahrain suspended the Shi’ite Al Wefaq opposition group on Tuesday to “safeguard the security of the kingdom,” according to a statement by the Justice Ministry. But human rights group say that several government activists have been arrested, and at least one has fled to Denmark.
While the King and the government belong to the Sunni religious faction, a majority of the population in Bahrain, also home to the US Fifth Fleet, is Shi’ite. The suspension of Al Wefaq came one day after authorities detained Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. On her Twitter account, his wife Sumaya Rajab said security forces searched the family’s home before they arrested Nabeel. She said they did not tell him what the charge is.
“We were all shocked that Nabeel was arrested again,” Nedal Al Salman, the head of international relations at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights told The Media Line. “He actually called us and asked if we had any information on why he was detained. Now we know that the charge is spreading false information.”
Rajab, who was one of the leaders of the anti-government protests in 2011 was jailed in 2012 on charges of organizing and participating in illegal protests and released two years later. He was sentenced again to six months in jail in 2015, but released after two months due to poor health.
Rajab’s arrest is just one of a series of human rights violations in Bahrain. According to a new report by Human Rights Watch, the latest annual report from an office in the country itself that had been tasked with addressing torture and mistreatment of detainees shows that authorities have made “little progress in holding police and security forces accountable.”
The Office of the Ombudsman was set up in 2012 to investigate complaints of torture and other human rights abuses. But the recently released third annual report shows that not much has been done.
“The third report from the Ombudsman’s Office underscores the serious inadequacy of Bahrain’s highly-touted efforts to end torture by its security forces,” Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch told The Media Line. “Torture has not stopped in Bahrain, and the institutions that were supposed to address the problem aren’t holding anyone accountable.”
He said that the government of Bahrain has not allowed Human Rights Watch representatives to enter the country except for “one or two very brief official visits” and not at all in the past two and a half years. He said that makes it difficult for the organization to quantify exactly how widespread torture is.
“The Office of the Ombudsman is clearly receiving complaints and referring them to the public prosecutor,” he said. “But then the trail goes dead and we don’t know how many are being acted upon.”
The Ombudsman’s latest report, released earlier this month, said it had received 992 “investigation requests”, which included 305 “complaints.” The report said that 55 of these were allegations of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and were referred to the prosecutor. Of those 53 cases are “under investigation”, one case is “pending in court” and one case was closed.
“It seems to be a smokescreen or wheels spinning,” Stork said.
Both the US, which has a naval base in Bahrain, and the UK, which is in the process of establishing one, have been hesitant to criticize Bahrain, which is closely allied to Saudi Arabia.
“This is all about doing nothing to piss the Saudis off,” he said. “That is a big part of US and UK calculations.”
Meanwhile the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein this week said that the government in Bahrain has stripped at least 250 people of their citizenship because of alleged disloyalty. The government has also banned any political gatherings in the capital since 2013.