In a letter addressed to the United Nations, a human rights forum highlighted the Bahraini government’s approach to exporting its violations by prosecuting its opponents abroad.
The Bahrain Forum for Human Rights called on United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to intervene in the face of the abuse of the Bahraini authorities by exporting their violations outside the borders, targeting political opponents and human rights defenders.
The Forum stressed that the behaviour of the Bahraini government constitutes a flagrant violation of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Forum pointed out that the Manama authorities demanded the security services in the Lebanese Republic to expel members of the National Islamic Al-Wefaq Society after the press conference held by Al-Wefaq to launch its human rights report (the epidemic of violations) last Thursday, a report that documents violations from 2019 to mid-2021.
The human rights forum urged the Secretary-General of the United Nations to call on the Bahraini authorities to achieve a national reconciliation that would achieve comprehensive and radical political and human rights reform instead of security options.
The Bahrain Press Association condemned the Bahraini regime’s targeting of political and human rights opponents and the continuation of prosecution policies and its extension outside the country.
The association lamented the exclusionary method adopted by the Bahraini authorities in the face of its opponents and exposed them to moral harm despite their presence outside its territory.
The association said that the government sent a protest to its Lebanese counterpart after Beirut hosted a press conference organized by the Al-Wefaq Association. It launched a report titled “The Epidemic of Violations”, continuing futile and useless policies.
It added that the Bahraini government’s exploitation of the recent Lebanese-Gulf crisis to pressure the Lebanese side constitutes a miserable step within the policies of repression that the state uses to confiscate opposition political and human rights opinion and attack opponents even who left the country to avoid political reprisals.
The Bahrain Press Association called on the Bahraini authorities to allow a more expansive space for freedoms, stressing its constant endeavour to defend the right of activists and journalists to record their positions and express their opinions without fear of any penalties or threats.
The Vice President of Salam Organization for Democracy and Human Rights, Sayed Youssef Al-Mohafda, said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement a few days ago regarding the Al-Wefaq Society conference in Lebanon was marred by inaccuracies.
The governorate enumerated some inaccuracies in the Bahraini Foreign Ministry’s statement, saying, “No person participated in the human rights conference, internationally or locally classified on terrorist lists,” adding that “holding conferences does not violate international conventions, as the statement claims.”
The governorate considered that “those who wrote the statement are unfamiliar with international law, human rights law, humanitarian law, and Lebanon’s domestic laws that guarantee freedom of expression.”
The Bahraini Foreign Ministry announced that it had lodged a strong protest with the Lebanese government, in objection to a press conference held by the National Islamic Al-Wefaq Society, during which it launched a human rights report entitled “The Epidemic of Violations.”
The report, in which the Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society documented the violations suffered by Bahraini citizens in the country, came in the report.
Al-Wefaq said that it had monitored 20,068 cases of arbitrary arrests of citizens from 2011 until the middle of this year, explaining that 1,716 children and more than 300 women were among these.
The report pointed out that the right to peaceful assembly has been completely prohibited in Bahrain since 2014. The Assembly Law has imposed unnecessary restrictions to criminalize the right to peaceful assembly.
