US bears direct responsiblity for failed dialogue and revolutionary uprising in Bahrain – it has encouraged al-Khalifa every bloody step along the way

Testimony of Tom Malinowski before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on the Implementation of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry Report

by Tom Malinowski – 1 August, 2012 – Human Rights Watch

Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing and for all the work you have done to keep the Congress focused on Bahrain. There is a powerful moral argument for doing so. Anyone who has been to Bahrain, who has met the people who have tried to bridge the country’s divisions through reasoned dialogue, and who has witnessed the persecution they have suffered as a result, will attest to that. But there is also a strategic imperative for the United States in championing human rights in this cosmopolitan and complex nation. We see today in Syria what can happen when an authoritarian government resists popular demands for justice and reform until it is too late. Imagine if something similar were to happen in Bahrain, a country that not only has a close partnership with the United States, but that sits right on the fault line between the Sunni and Shia Muslim worlds, and between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is not yet too late for Bahrain to avoid this fate, and many people in the country are working hard to avert it. The United States also has a lot more influence in Bahrain than it did in Syria. But the time to use that influence is running short.

Last November, Bahrain had a golden chance to close the dark chapter that began when its government suppressed a pro-democracy movement earlier in 2011. King Hamad had appointed the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), chaired by the esteemed international jurist Cherif Bassiouni, to look into the human rights violations committed when the country’s pro-democracy movement was suppressed last year. Bassiouni wrote a fair-minded report, documenting the arbitrary arrest and torture of opposition leaders and urging far-reaching reforms to punish those responsible and end human rights abuses. To his credit, the king accepted the report and promised to implement it. The government dropped charges against some dissidents accused of speech “crimes,” reinstated many people who had been dismissed from work and school for attending protests, and reduced abuse of prisoners in formal detention facilities. But since then, the momentum has dissipated.

There has been no real resumption of dialogue between the government and opposition to pursue what moderates on both sides recognize as the solution to Bahrain’s crisis — a constitutional monarchy in which government ministers are chosen by an elected parliament rather than appointed by the king.

The BICI’s call to release political detainees has also not been fully heeded. The courts have agreed to retry key opposition leaders, but the government still refuses to release them, though their convictions were based on nothing more than the content of their speeches and participation in peaceful meetings and rallies challenging the monarchy. These include Abdulhadi al Khawaja, who staged a long hunger strike earlier this year to protest his continuing detention. They also include Ibrahim Sharif, the Sunni leader of a secular-left party, whose detention, and very existence, demonstrates something that hard-liners in the government don’t want us to know – that opposition to their authoritarian rule is not purely sectarian, that many Sunnis joined their Shia compatriots in demanding reform when the Arab Spring came to Bahrain last year. …more