British MP Lord Paul Scriven attacked his country’s government for insisting on continuing its support for the Khalifa regime, ignoring human rights violations in Bahrain and working to whitewash them.
Lord Scriven said on Twitter that the UK continues to insist, blindly, that Bahrain’s Children’s Restorative Justice Act respects the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Lord Scriven referred to the criticism and reports of Human Rights Watch and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy regarding violations of children’s rights in Bahrain and the United Nations’ call on the Bahraini government to give children access to a lawyer and their families after arrest.
The British MP sent a letter to the Minister of State for Commonwealth Affairs and the United Nations, Lord Tariq Ahmed, in which he said that “Britain’s policy cannot defend these violations.”
Human Rights Watch condemned the British authorities’ support for the Bahraini government’s policy, despite mounting evidence of escalating humanitarian violations and the arbitrary detention of children.
The organization pointed out that the UK government had praised Bahrain rather than pressured it. On February 3, the government evaded a parliamentary question about violations in the case of the six children detained in Bahrain and wrongly praised the Restorative Justice Act for its supposed compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It called on the British government to reconsider its uncritical support for the detention of children by the Bahraini authorities and call for fundamental reforms.
Recently, a parliamentary petition condemning human rights violations in Bahrain gained broad support in the British House of Commons about a month after its submission.
The number of signatories to the petition has reached 70 MPs from various British parties, knowing that it was launched on January 12.
The petition highlights violations of human rights by the ruling authorities in Bahrain and condemns the continued arbitrary detention and inhumane treatment of prisoners of conscience.
The petition alerts prisoners of conscience in Bahrain to academic Abdul Jalil Al-Singace, Al-Ramz, Hassan Mushaima, Abdul-Wahhab Hussain, the jurist, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and Sheikh Ali Salman.
The petition pointed out that Freedom House ranked Bahrain in its 2021 report as a not free country and ranked 150 out of 167 countries in the Global Democracy Index issued by the Economist magazine for 2020. It ranked 168 out of 180 in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
Representatives who signed the petition urge the Bahraini authorities to release all prisoners of conscience, enable civil society representatives and human rights defenders to work freely, allow genuine political opposition and independent media, and end the use of the death penalty.
The petition also urges the Bahraini authorities to initiate an objective and inclusive dialogue within the country on political and constitutional reform and to cooperate with human rights organizations and experts, including from the United Nations, to allow, among other things, an independent assessment of prison conditions and conditions.
The petition calls on the British government to review its funding to Bahrain and other agreements with it and to interview human rights defenders, organizations and civil society representatives and the peaceful opposition from Bahrain.
The map of the signatory representatives to the British parties was distributed as follows: 23 MPs from the Scottish National Party, 19 MPs from the Labor Party, 11 MPs from the Liberal Democrats, 6 from the Democratic Unionist Party, 3 independents, 3 MPs from the Blade Party, one MP from the Green Party and one from the Green Party.
This petition is the third petition that exceeds the threshold of 70 British MPs’ support since the beginning of this century. It was preceded by a petition submitted by the former leader of the British Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2014, which received the support of 73 MPs.
At the time, the petition addressed the lack of principles and standards for a fair trial in the judicial system in Bahrain.
It was preceded by another petition, which was supported by 83 deputies, submitted by Labor MP Anne Clyde in November 2017, in which the deputies expressed their concern about the rulings issued by the Al-Khalifa family against three members of the family of Bahraini human rights activist Sayed Ahmed Al-Wadaei, who is based in London where he practices his human rights activities.
