Al Wefaq welcomes the “High Commissioner for Human Rights” delegation and hopes it will play role to stop the violations in Bharain

Al Wefaq Islamic national Society welcomed the High Commissioner for Human Rights Office delegation which will be arriving at the Kingdom of Bahrain soon, that is, after the serious violations the kingdom has experienced as some were revealed in Mr. Bassiouni’s Committee which was formed by the authority in Bahrain.

The society confirmed the High Commissioner for human rights is a neutral international Foundation and has close follow-up of the humanitarian situation and human rights everywhere, including the Kingdom of Bahrain, which suffers from terrible abuses against the largest cross-section in the Bahrain due to demands of democratic transformation.

Al Wefaq assured that the people of Bahrain and its citizens that are violated against welcome the delegation, expressing its full cooperation with it and hoping for the delegation to have freedom of movement to observe the miserable human rights situation in Bahrain. The society is ambitious that the delegation plays a vital role in the implementation of the BICI recommendations, as there are serious fears that the authority will get around them as it did with recommendations I and II.

The society stressed the central role of the High Commissioner for human rights office and its knowledge of the human rights situation experienced in Bahrain before and during the 1990s, and later formal systematic violation of the universal principles and foundations of human rights. The UN OHCHR office is well informed of the procrastination tactics towards compliance with the commitments undertaken by the authorities, while adding violations in the beginning of this year when the people chose to start a national pro-democracy movement and draw their map of political reform, they were insulted and violated against as the authority imposed National Safety Situation (State of Emergency) which was condemned both locally and internationally. …source

USCIRF Comments on Bahrain Independent Human Rights Report
For Immediate Release – December 14, 2011

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A Bahraini government-appointed committee should address concerns related to the demolition earlier this year of dozens of Shi’a Muslim religious structures, said the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

On November 23, the Bahraini Independent Commission on Inquiry (BICI), created and funded by the Bahraini government, released a 500-page report detailing systematic and egregious abuses in the government’s response to protests earlier this year. The BICI report includes findings and recommendations related to the destruction of Shi’a religious sites by government authorities.

The BICI received information that 53 Shi’a religious structures were demolished by Bahraini authorities between March 1 and May 11. The report found that, in violation of its own law, the Bahraini government did not give adequate notice of the demolitions nor did it allow judicial review before the demolitions took place. The BICI findings on the destruction of religious sites, and other Bahraini government abuses, affirmed a number of previous reports Bahraini and international human rights groups have issued that came to many of the same conclusions.

“Most of the BICI findings about the destruction of Shi’a religious structures are detailed and specific, including that the timing of the demolitions was ‘perceived as a collective punishment’ and provoked further tension between the government and the Shi’a population,” said USCIRF chair Leonard Leo. “However, the recommendations are incomplete, and do not help ensure that illegally destroyed religious structures are rebuilt or that the Shi’a community is adequately compensated or restituted for loss of religious materials.” …more

EA World News – 13 December, 2011

In Bahrain, opposition societies organised a gathering on Tuesday which was “like a festival”, according to an EA eyewitness, with only one speech and bands playing national songs:

The largest opposition group, Al Wefaq, put out a statement declaring that the regime is not serious about reform, with no easing of human rights violations despite the criticisms in the report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry.

Later in the evening, security forces dispersed protests in a number of Bahraini villages. …source

Mexico’s universal struggle against power and forgetting
Sunday, December 4, 2011 – By John Pilger – Green Left

Alameda Park is Mexico City’s languid space for lovers and open-air ballroom dancers: the gents in two-tone shoes, the ladies in finery and heels.

The cobbled paths undulate from the great earthquake of 1985. You imagine the fairground sinking into the cobwebs of cracks, its Edwardian organ playing forlornly. Two small churches nearby totter precariously: the surreal is Mexico’s facade.

Hidden behind the poplars is the museum where Diego Rivera’s mural “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park” occupies the entire ground floor. You sink into sofa chairs and journey for an hour across his masterpiece.

Originally painted at the Hotel Prado in 1947, it was rescued and restored when the earthquake demolished all around. More than 45 feet long and 14 feet high, it presents the political warriors of Mexico’s past, from the conquistador Hernando Cortes to Rivera himself, depicted as a child holding the hand of a fashionably dressed skeleton, the iconic symbol of the Day of the Dead.

Standing maternally beside him is his wife, Frida Kahlo, Mexico’s artistic heroine. Around them parade the impervious rich and unrequited poor.

What is it about Mexico that is a universal political dream? As in a Rivera mural, nothing is held back: no class martyrdom, no colonial tragedy. The message is freedom next time.

The autocracy that emerged from the revolution of 1910-19 gave itself the Orwellian-name Party of the Institutionalised Revolution. This was eventually replaced by businesspeople promising a pseudo democracy, which in 1994 embraced Bill Clinton’s rapacious North American Free Trade Association.

Within a year, a million jobs were destroyed south of the border, along with Emiliano Zapata’s revolutionary triumph, the constitutional protection of indigenous land from sale or privatisation.

At a stroke, Mexico surrendered its economy to Wall Street.

The beneficiaries of the new, privatised Mexico are those like Carlos Slim, now ahead of Bill Gates as the world’s richest man, whose fingers are lodged in every imaginable pie: from food and construction to the national telephone company.

A US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks said, “The net worth of the 10 richest people of Mexico ― a country where more than 40 per cent of the population lives in poverty ― represents roughly 10 per cent of the gross domestic product.”

The last election, in 2006, was won by Felipe Calderon, Washington’s man, followed by persistent allegations that it was rigged. Calderon declared what he calls “a war on drug gangs” and 50,000 dead are the result. No one doubts the menace of the drug cartels, but the real “security issue” is more likely the resistance of ordinary Mexicans to an enduring inequity and a rotten elite.

For most of this year, thousands of los indignados (“the outraged”) have taken over the huge parade ground known as the Zocalo facing the National Palace.

The occupations in Wall Street and around the world have their genesis in Latin America. The difference here is there is none of the angst about the protesters’ “focus”. …more

Saudi Arabia’s Breach of Human Rights
by César Chelala – December 13, 2011 – CommonDreams.org

December 10 is Human Rights Day. On December 12, 2011, Saudi Arabian authorities ordered the execution of a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery. Although the Saudi Interior Ministry didn’t give details of the woman’s crime, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, chief of the religious police, who stated that the woman had tricked people, making them believe that she could cure them of a variety of ailments. It was an outrageous response to a serious crime.

“Despite the fact that I hate violence against women, when it comes to God’s will, I have to carry it out,” said Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, Saudi Arabia’s top executioner, during an interview with the Saudi daily Arab News. And with remarkable calm he added, “It doesn’t matter to me: two, four, ten – as long as I am doing God’s will, it doesn’t matter how many people I execute.”

Beheadings of women in Saudi Arabia didn’t start until the early 1990’s. Before then, they were shot. Up to the end of 2011, forty-nine women have been publicly beheaded, mainly in major cities such as Riyadh, Jeddah and Dahran. Executioners are proud of their job, which is handed down from one generation to the next. In Saudi Arabia, executioners use a traditional Arab scimitar approximately 44 inches long.

Many people consider the government headed by King Abdullah as reformist. After all, he was behind the decision to allow women to vote and in local elections, albeit in 2015. However, the World Economic Forum 2009 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Saudi Arabia 130th out of 134 countries when considering gender parity issues. That same report ranked several Muslim countries such as Kyrgystan, Gambia and Indonesia significantly higher than Saudi Arabia on issues of women’s equality. …more