Part of crackdown on dissent in Persian Gulf kingdom
The Sunni-led government in Bahrain is targeting Shi’ite clerics in a systematic campaign of harassment, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. The group charged the government with violating the clerics’ rights to freedom of assembly and speech.
Last week, a Bahraini court convicted Sheikh Ali Humaidan of “illegal gathering” and sentenced him to one year in prison for his involvement in peaceful gatherings in the village of Diraz. The protest came after Bahrain dissolved the country’s main opposition group, Al Wifaq, and revoked the citizenship of Sheikh Isa Qasim, the group’s spiritual leader. The authorities accused him of “creating an extremist sectarian environment” and said he had “encourage sectarianism and violence.”
“Shia clerics are just the latest target of a general crackdown by the Bahraini authorities against all those who won’t toe the line of the government,” Ahmed Benchesmi, Communications Director for Human Rights Watch in the Middle East and North Africa told The Media Line. “Before them, human rights activists, bloggers, academics and journalists have been arrested, tortured, some of them even stripped from their citizenship. Now it seems the latest oppressive tactic consists in playing the sectarian tension card by targeting religious figures from a distinct religious community”.
While the majority of Bahrain’s population is Shi’ite, the King, Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa is Sunni. Human rights activists say there has been a steady increase in repression since 2011, when the King, backed by troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, cracked down on large street protests as part of the Arab spring. The protests had a sectarian dimension, as most of the demonstrators were Shi’ite, angry at the Sunni monarchy and government.
Media reports from Bahrain say that at least eight other Muslim religious sheikhs are facing charges for illegal gathering. Human Rights Watch quotes “credible local sources” that the authorities in Bahrain have questions or brought charges against at least 56 Shi’ite clerics since June, but said they could not verify these claims.
Human rights groups say they are concerned that the government is encouraging divisisons between Sunni and Shi’ite.
“Now that the Bahraini authorities have begun to run out of human rights defenders and political activists to jail, silence, or exile, they are moving on to the Shi’ite community’s religious leaders,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Bahrain appears to be willfully and recklessly fanning the flames of sectarianism, while simultaneously taking moderate voices out of play.”
The US is especially concerned about Bahrain, which houses the Fifth Fleet. The oil-rich country survived the Arab spring intact but anger continues below the surface.
“These prosecutions and interrogations of clerics are the latest stage of a systematic campaign to nullify dissent and protest in Bahrain,” Stork said. “But to target the Shia community’s religious leaders at a time when the region is facing sectarian violence is a dangerous and irresponsible tactic that Bahrain’s US and UK allies in particular should forcefully condemn.”
Earlier this month, a group of United Nations human rights experts criticized “numerous charges” brought against Shi’ite clerics and called on the Bahraini government to end its “systematic harassment of its Shi’ite population.” The experts represent the UN independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanism on human rights.
In February, the government deported Sheikh Mohammed Hasan Ali Husain, one of more than 200 Bahrainis stripped of their citizenship since 2012. In 2014, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief said the decision to support another Shi’ite cleric “may amount to intimidating and thus discriminating against the entire Shi’ite Muslim community in the country because of its religious beliefs.”