Discussions are taking place in the French Parliament about the human rights violations committed by the Bahraini government against its people amid demands to sever ties with the Khalifa regime.
Three members of the French National Assembly from three different political parties have spoken about human rights violations in Bahrain. They are publicly scrutinizing the close relationship between the French government and Bahrain. This relationship could question France’s values after French support for “The ruling regime” and “unbearable persecution” emerged.
The representatives gave a public and official briefing on the reality of what is happening in Bahrain, which other Western leaders have failed to do so far. This is one of how the Bahraini monarchy prevents democracy from coming to a country that wants it and from the human costs resulting from the violations of the monarchy.
Representative David Habib spoke about prisoners of conscience in Bahrain, specifically about Hassan Mushaima, and asked the French Foreign Minister to indicate the measures that the government will take to pressure the Bahraini regime to release political prisoners who are in prison.
In his public address to the National Assembly last week, Representative Habib referred to the case of the prominent leader of the Bahraini opposition, the prisoner Hassan Mushaima, and the medical negligence he is being subjected to at the hands of Bahraini prison officials during his current prison term.
Mushaima was a leader of the political opposition in Bahrain and a founding member of the Al-Wefaq movement, which was the largest political opposition movement in 2016 before its dissolution. He has been serving a life sentence in Jau Prison since 2011 after being accused of crimes related to his peaceful participation in pro-democracy demonstrations.
Representative Habib’s statement also addressed the thousands of prisoners of conscience detained in Bahrain’s government prisons, describing the situation as “widespread repression affecting many human rights defenders” and mentioning the need for France to put “real diplomatic pressure on these human rights violations” in Bahrain.
In turn, MP Pierre Darville, the French Foreign Minister, warned against the Bahraini government’s abolition of political freedoms and civil society.
Darville asked about the plans the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diplomacy will take to address “the lack of respect for human rights in Bahrain.”
Darville also gave a detailed presentation at the National Assembly on human rights violations committed by the Bahrain government. His comments included the violent suppression of the 2011 uprising “people in favour of democracy and human rights and against social inequality,” Saudi Arabia’s military support for this violent repression, the Bahraini monarchy’s continuing “cruelly crackdown, crushing all dissent,” and the harassment, prosecution and imprisonment of opponents of the “regime” methodology.
Darville also explained how the Bahraini government suppressed dissent and highlighted the case of Hassan Mushaima.
His statements included the facts of how political opponents are treated in Bahrain, that they are “arbitrarily imprisoned and victims of ill-treatment, abuse and torture,” and that activists and human rights defenders are under tight surveillance through the Israeli Pegasus spy program.
Representative Philip Jocelyn spoke in the National Assembly, asking the Foreign Minister what he intends to do to end the persecution, “arbitrary torture and executions” that Bahrain is witnessing.
He drew the attention of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the fear that the people of Bahrain live daily and the violations published by “international observers,” and correctly specified that the abuses and violations committed by the Kingdom of Bahrain “mainly target political activists and human rights defenders.”
Representative Jocelyn, like his colleagues in the National Assembly, also noted that some of the characteristic violations of the monarchy in its mission to keep democracy outside the country are “restrictions on freedom of movement, denial of nationality, as well as torture and other ill-treatment in detention.
