Raises Questions and Doubts about the Bahraini Government's Intention towards the Next Elections

12 May 2010

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses its great concern regarding the harassment practiced by the Bahraini authorities towards the local and international organizations or civil society institutions through administrative decisions. This harassment was recently represented in preventing the training officer at the National Democratic Institute (NDI) – from entering Bahrain to conduct some workshops and training the political and human rights associations.

One of the local newspapers published a news piece that the Director of the National Democratic Institute residing in the Gulf, Mrs. Stacey Hague, was prevented from entering Bahrain after the official authorities and some MPs closely related to the government sent a warning earlier due to the so-called "interference of an institute in the internal affairs" of the country. The National Democratic Institute – being close to the U.S. Democratic Party – is one of the largest specialized American institutes in training, educating and political empowerment, and has wide-ranging activities in many third world countries. NDI held, since 2002 and up to this day, numerous courses and training workshops to Bahraini civil society institutions and where a large number of more than 2500 people, among them MPs, municipals, human rights workers and members of political associations benefited from. The last of these workshops was held last month to train Bahrain civil society in how to monitor the election. It was held in coordination with Bahrain Human Rights Society.

The BCHR believes that the reason of prevention may be due to the Bahraini authorities' fear that the NDI would monitor the next municipal and parliamentary elections in October 2010, or that it would empower the civil society institutions to do so, especially after the institute initiated courses on monitoring elections to a group of human rights youth workers. The Bahraini authorities prevent any kind of independent international monitoring of the elections.

The government of the United States, and through the military, security, economic, judicial and commercial agreements with the government of Bahrain and its open relations with all the components of the State and society, is actually interfering in all affairs of Bahrain, therefore it is not convincing to prevent the institute from training or monitoring the elections on the grounds that it is interfering in internal affairs. The U.S administration work in double standards in dealing with the Bahraini government; on one hand it imposes its will on the government in all security and economic affairs related to its interest, while on the other hand it is oddly negligent when the matter is related to empowering the civil society institutions.

This is not the first time where the authorities prevent human rights and political organizations and institutions and its representatives from entering Bahrain. Where it prevented, in March 2010, the French "Kitson" organization from holding seminars on anti-terrorism. It also prevented, in April that followed, the Bahrain Human Rights Society from conducting workshops to train on the mechanisms of visiting prisons on the grounds that the topic of the workshop is considered political and that the society is not permitted to work with political topics.

In May 2006, several months before the previous parliamentary elections, the Bahraini authorities expelled the Director of the NDI, Fawzy Gouled, in belief that it is due to the role played by the institute in training and empowering the civil society institutions, which is something rejected by the Bahraini authorities under the pretext of interfering in internal affairs. The report of Dr. Salah Al-Bandar indicates the Bahraini authorities' fear from the role played by the NDI in empowering the opposition and supporting it.

The BCHR fears that preventing this official at the NDI from entering Bahrain or any other institute affiliated with it to do its work now before the next elections raises a lot of questions on the intentions of the Bahraini government from the next elections, and the increasing doubts about the ability of manipulating the procedures or changing the results, as had happened in the previous elections through opening general centers away from residential areas where it is believed that widespread manipulations have taken place, as well as bringing many Saudi tribes, who were naturalized illegally for this purpose.

Based on the above, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights demands the Bahraini authorities the following:

• Lift the ban from the National Democratic Institute and permit it to work on empowering the institutions wishing to do so, and to lift the ban from all international institutes who wish to monitor the upcoming elections or training the local institutes to do so.
 

• To stop targeting the international institutions or restricting them from carrying out their role in empowering the civil society institutions from carrying out theirs.
 

• To stop the procedures which increase the tension and space and which remove the remaining trust between the government and civil society institutions.