Bahrain Regime remains unaccountable for brutal abuses – complicity by BICI to US State Department and UN “Human Rights Commissions”

Bahrain: Human Rights Body Should Target Repression
20 May, 2012 – Human Rights Watch

United Nations member states should scrutinize Bahrain’s deplorable human rights record during the country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council on May 21, 2012. The international community should push Bahrain to adopt specific measures to ensure free expression and peaceful assembly, end torture, free political prisoners, and establish credible accountability mechanisms for continuing abuses.

(Geneva) – United Nations member states should scrutinize Bahrain’s deplorable human rights record during the country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council on May 21, 2012, Human Rights Watch said today. The international community should push Bahrain to adopt specific measures to ensure free expression and peaceful assembly, end torture, free political prisoners, and establish credible accountability mechanisms for continuing abuses.

Under the UPR process, the Human Rights Council examines the human rights record of each UN member state once every four years. The process began in 2008, and Bahrain is the first country to undergo a second UPR round.

“The UPR should focus on Bahrain’s routine suppression of basic political rights like freedom of association as well as the grave human rights violations committed in the brutal 2011 crackdown against pro-democracy protesters,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Countries should ask Bahrain why it hasn’t released scores of prisoners whose only crimes were to call for greater political rights.”

The voice of the international community has been subdued regarding Bahrain’s manifold violations, especially compared with the international response to abuses in Syria, Libya, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries, Human Rights Watch said.

Bahrain’s second UPR will follow more than a year of violent suppression of what began as peaceful protests. In mid-March 2011, as the demonstrations continued, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa declared a “State of National Safety” and established special military courts. These courts convicted and sentenced to prison hundreds of protesters for exercising their rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, despite statements by Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifaon state television that, “It is among the rights of citizens of Bahrain to gather and march peacefully.”

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), appointed by King Hamad and consisting of five renowned international jurists, concluded that the government’s security forces had violently crushed pro-democracy demonstrations and documented widespread and systematic violations of international human rights law, as well as Bahraini law by Bahraini forces.

The commission recommended voiding all convictions based on people’s peaceful statements or protests, investigating allegations of torture against ranking officials, and revising laws that criminalize speech and peaceful assembly.

But Bahrain has conducted few reviews of the military court sentences and released even fewer prisoners. None of the accused protest leaders, whose convictions were based solely on their political statements and associations, have been freed, Human Rights Watch said. …more