The Suffering of the Bahraini Medics Must End Immediately
by Richard Sollom, MA, MPH on July 19, 2011
This weekend, another Bahraini doctor was arrested in Manama, the capital of Bahrain. This detention continues the injustice that has plagued Bahrain’s medical professionals since the unrest started in February. Twelve medics still remain in government custody and face an unknown fate. The Bahraini authorities should unconditionally release all detained medics, dismiss all charges and investigate the allegations of torture.
The doctors in custody have allegedly been beaten, blindfolded, forced to confess to crimes they did not commit, and endured humiliation and insults regarding their sects and beliefs. One of the female doctors released said “I spent four weeks in jail because I was doing my job. In detention, they call us by our first name, not Doctor. Furthermore, the male interrogator kept calling me a whore and a daughter of a whore.”
Bahraini medics should not be pawns in a political game. Unfortunately, doctors in Bahrain have found themselves on the front line of political conflict and have become targets of the Bahraini forces. A released female doctor said “I am still in shock; I never expected that I would be arrested and tortured. Now, I know how the victims of the sexual harassment feel because now I am one of them. I lost my job and reputation and I have no support and no treatment.”
Bahraini medics need our help to resume their work and fulfill their ethical duties to treat people in need. The Bahraini government should respect their commitment to international law and release all medical professionals immediately.
Richard Sollom is Deputy Director at PHR
Huffington Post: Pledging Allegiance in Bahrain
Ahmed Farhan, killed on 15 March 2011 by security forces, the man carrying him (Munaim Mansoor) was sentenced later to 3 years imprisonment by military court, for carrying him.
by Dan Williams 19 July 2011
Since mid-April, the government of Bahrain has urged its citizens to sign pledges of allegiance to the country's "wise leadership," saying the signatures would be inscribed on a golden sword whose existence would then be entered in the Guinness Book of World Records, in the category of... well, "sword bearing the largest number of signatures," according to the official Bahrain News Agency.
Allegiance "events" have been held all over the island kingdom -- in stadiums, schools and, in June, at businesses where citizens lined up dutifully to sign the pledge.
No reports yet on whether the campaign includes prisons, where hundreds of political protestors and dissidents are held.
Bahrain's serial assault on the country's pro-democracy protest movement has been eclipsed by the violent upheavals in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Yet, Bahrain is geostrategically important and should not be ignored. The US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain. Bahrain's ruling family and its main regional backer, Saudi Arabia, have positioned the small kingdom at the epicenter of a tense rivalry with Iran.
That would argue for resolving Bahrain's crisis as a high priority both for the government and its international backers. So far, the strategy is full-tilt repression.
On July 5, Human Rights Watch issued a briefing paper detailing the systematic crackdown on critics of the government since mid-March, when government police and army troops violently brought an end to a month of mostly peaceful protests. Hundreds of prisoners remain in incommunicado detention; credible charges of torture have gone unaddressed.
At first glance, the 30 deaths at the hands of Bahrain's security forces don't match the scale of hundreds of civilian deaths in Libya or Syria. But the native population of Bahrain is just 525,000 and official violence has been visited almost exclusively on Shiite Muslim citizens, who make up about 60 percent of Bahrainis. Moreover, the range of repression is breathtaking: besides torture, televised confessions, midnight home raids by masked men with guns, beatings, mass firings from jobs in the private sector, withdrawal of scholarships at home and abroad from students who demonstrated.
You might not hear much about all this, and not only because media attention is elsewhere. On May 24, the government ordered Frederik Richter, a Reuters correspondent and the only resident international journalist based in Bahrain in recent years, to leave. Human Rights Watch has not been allowed in since the authorities, on April 20, gave me 24 hours to leave after I asked to extend my visa.
The government sometimes tries to put out its own version of events, sometimes quite clumsily. In early April, photos circulated on the Internet of the body of Ali Ibrahim Isa Saqer, who died in jail and whose corpse was bruised and slashed. The government threatened to jail a human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, for "circulating fabricated photos" of Saqer's body, but the photos I saw matched the state of Saqer's body, which I viewed when I observed the body prior to burial at its ceremonial cleansing.
Fatima Al Balooshi, the social development and human rights minister and, at the time, also acting health minister also called the pictures fabrications. Then, at a news conference, a BBC reporter told her his crew had seen the body. Al- Balooshi rather haltingly promised to "ask for an investigation." That's the last we heard of any investigation.
If further proof of cruel obtuseness was needed, an image of Saqer, when still alive, showed up on Bahraini television April 28, purportedly confessing to killing two policemen.
An official end to martial law June 1 capped a campaign to show that everything was back-to-normal. Shortly after, organizers of Formula 1 announced that they would race in Bahrain next October to replace the contest scheduled for February, but cancelled due to the unrest. Bahraini officials said the race, an annual affair, will "remind the world about Bahrain at its best."
Whoops. Race teams objected, and the organizers cancelled again.
On June 3, the official Bahrain News Agency said that the top UN human rights official, Navi Pillay, acknowledged to Minister al-Balooshi in Geneva that Pillay had received "false information" about Bahrain's human rights situation. Maybe the minister didn't think Pillay could read the newspapers. On June 7, Pillay's spokesperson complained of the news agency's "blatant distortion of her words."
The government announced a national dialogue on political reforms, saying it wanted the talks to be unconditional. That's basically a code word for keeping dissidents and demonstrators in jail. The country's largest Shiite political party walked out of the talks on Monday, saying its views weren't being taken seriously.
On June 22, a military court sentenced eight leading Shiite dissident activists involved in anti-government demonstrations to life in prison. Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja, a former human rights activist, and Ibrahim Sharif, a secular, Sunni political leader, were among them.
Matar Ibrahim Matar and Jawad Fairouz, former parliament members from Wefaq, the largest Shiite party, in jail since May 2, await their trials.
King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa finally did take a promising step on June 29 when he set up an investigative commission to probe "the events occurring in Bahrain February/March 2011, and any consequences arising out of the aforementioned events.'' It is headed by M. Cherif Bassiouni, a distinguished expert in human rights and war crimes, and includes Nigel Rodley, member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
This is certainly more auspicious than the pledge of allegiance gambit -- which itself has its sinister side. On June 29, Reuters reported that Bahrain University is requiring its students to sign the loyalty pledge or give up their right to higher education. I've received messages from students saying they were corralled into signing, and did so, fearing reprisals if they didn't. Among the demands: students must pledge to avoid "harming Bahrain's domestic or international reputation."
But it is the ruling Al Khalifas who have grievously harmed Bahrain's reputation. Bahrain's rulers should consider another approach. How about just pledging allegiance to the rights of citizens of Bahrain to free speech, peaceful assembly and justice?
Dan Williams is a Senior emergencies researcher, Human Rights Watch
HRF: President Obama: Push for a Real National Dialogue in Bahrain!
By Quinn O'Keefe Senior Associate, Human Rights Defenders
15 July 2011 Despite an ongoing national dialogue between the Bahraini government and some parts of civil society, the government continues to intimidate, torture, and detain human rights defenders, and shoot at civilians.
The United States has taken many positive steps in addressing human rights violations committed by the Bahraini government, which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, but more needs to be done as the crackdown on pro-democracy activists and their supporters continues.
Human Rights First went to Bahrain and spoke with a number of human rights defenders, torture survivors and recently released detainees. In a report released yesterday, we found that the situation on the ground remains dire and dangerous for human rights defenders and civilians. For a real national dialogue to occur, President Obama should insist upon the following benchmarks:
* End the continuing crackdown on pro-democracy activists and supporters and shootings at unarmed civilians, as witnessed by Human Rights First staff; * End arbitrary detentions, torture and mistreatment of detainees; * End sectarian violence and discrimination against the Shi’a community; * Release of peaceful protestors from jail and drop all charges pending against them; and * An end to the expulsion of students.
The continuing crackdown, growing sectarian divide and the puppet show of a national dialogue are preventing real reconciliation from occurring in Bahrain. People continue to live in fear of violence, detention and torture.
Thank you for taking action!
Global Research: Canadian Citizen Tortured in Bahrain… But Harper Government Keeps Silent
by Finian Cunningham Global Research, July 17, 2011
A young Canadian man suffering from a serious heart condition has been abducted and tortured by the Bahraini regime ¬– yet the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has maintained a steadfast silence over his plight.
This lack of action by the Harper government is in spite of the fact that the Canadian Consuls in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are fully aware of the case. The official silence may be due to a bilateral trade deal Canada is in the process of completing with the Bahraini regime, and also Ottawa’s increasing subordinance to Washington’s foreign policy and therefore unwillingness to upset an important US ally in the Persian Gulf.
Naser Al Raas (28), who resides in Ottawa, was caught up in the popular uprising in the oil-rich Gulf kingdom that erupted in mid-February while on a family holiday. He arrived in Bahrain on 6 March to visit his five sisters who live there.
But when the former Microsoft IT specialist went to exit the country on 20 March, he was stopped while boarding his flight by ministry of interior officers. Although Al Raas was travelling on a Canadian passport, he was hauled into a room at Bahrain’s international airport and detained for several hours during which time he was hooded, interrogated and physically assaulted. That was just the beginning of his nightmare.
He was then taken by his captors to the infamous Al Qala – the ministry of interior headquarters in the capital, Manama, and incarcerated for four weeks without any criminal charges being made. During his illegal detention, Al Raas was severely tortured.
The Canadian suffers from a rare lung and heart condition – pulmonary embolism. He has previously undergone two open-heart operations at the Ottawa Heart Institute and he requires constant medication. Around the time of arrest, his supply of medication, which he had brought from Canada, ran out. He has been without treatment for nearly four months now.
The sprawling grey Al Qala fortress in Manama is surrounded by an imposing 20-metre-high wall and is equipped with underground holding cells. It is notorious among Bahrainis as the regime’s “torture chamber”. This is where up to 1,000 civilians have been detained following the US-backed crackdown against the pro-democracy uprising that is challenging the unelected Al Khalifa monarchy, headed by King Hamad. Four people have been tortured to death while in custody in recent months, according to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights [1].
The fierce repression against peaceful demonstrators escalated on 14 March when troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded Bahrain to shore up the Al Khalifa regime. Two days before the Saudi-led military intervention, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates held a private meeting with King Hamad in Manama.
Despite condemnations by numerous human rights groups of the Saudi-led invasion and subsequent violations, Washington has remained a staunch supporter of the Al Khalifa regime, with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton describing it as a “key ally”. The US Navy Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain.
For one month, the family of Naser Al Raas did not know of his whereabouts or even if he was alive. They knew that his last movements were in the airport because he talked to a friend by phone just before his scheduled departure. However, for the next four weeks, the Bahraini government denied all knowledge of the Canadian man.
After one month of being held incommunicado, the Bahraini regime released Al Raas but with-held his passport. He is now stranded in Bahrain – without medication – pending a prosecution trial. On three dates in June, he was brought before a Military Court. It was during the opening hearing on 7 June that he first learnt of the charges against him.
Al Raas stands accused, along with 12 other men, of kidnapping a police officer and promoting crimes against the rulers. He recalls that during his interrogation period he was forced to sign a piece of paper. This has turned out to be a confession to the crimes he is being accused of – accusations that Al Raas denies.
The Bahraini rulers have shown boundless imagination in fabricating prosecution cases. For example, last month it sentenced an internationally respected human rights advocate, Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, to life in prison for “trying to overthrow the state while working for a foreign enemy”. The regime is also currently prosecuting senior surgeons and doctors that it accuses of “concealing machineguns under hospital beds” and “exaggerating the wounds of patients for propaganda purposes, resulting in the death of patients” [2].
All trials in Bahrain since the Saudi-led invasion have been conducted in Military Courts, with minimal legal counsel permitted to the defendants. In over 400 trials, confessions forced through torture are the sole basis for the prosecution case. In eerie show trial fashion, sometimes videos of defendants making co