Prisoners release needed before Bahrain talks: UK

Prisoners release needed before Bahrain talks: UK
18 December, 2011 – ABNA

The release of all the political prisoners from jail in Bahrain must precede the start of any constructive dialogue for reforms inside the country, according to British Liberal Democrat peer Lord Avebury.

Prisoners release needed before Bahrain talks: UK(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – The release of all the political prisoners from jail in Bahrain must precede the start of any constructive dialogue for reforms inside the country, according to British Liberal Democrat peer Lord Avebury.

“I believe a precondition for any kind of dialogue must be the freedom for those who stood up for human rights and justice,” the 83-year old peer said.

“The British government should be pressing Bahrain authorities to do that first before they sit down and talk about dialogue,” he told after chairing a seminar in parliament entitled “Dead end for a regime guilty of systematic torture” in Bahrain.

In an interview, Avebury criticised Prime Minister David Cameron for inviting the Bahraini king for talks last week before recommendations by Bissiouni inquiry into human rights abuses were implemented.

“I am disappointed that the prime minister received the king and the prince quite recently and seemed to gloss over all that happened,” he said.

Cameron was “talking about a dialogue when the main leaders of the opposition and human rights activists are still in prison under heavy sentences many of them having received life sentences,” the Lib Dem peer said,

This, he said, was “even though the king agreed to implement the recommendations of the Bissiouni Commission, which included the release of all the political prisoners.”

“So far I am not satisfied with the reaction by the British government both to the Bissiouni report and independent report that was produced by many non-governmental organisations in Bahrain,” he added.

At the seminar, Avebury suggested that the commission, ordered by the king back in June, was aimed to remove international pressure to stop torture, arbitrary detention, extra-judicial killing and dismissal of workers in Bahrain.

He told that he was not hopeful that reforms being carried out after observing repeated failures by the Bahraini authority to bring about democratic change for the past 20 years.

“We have a cycle. We go round in circle with unrest leading to some minor apparent concessions and as soon as the fuss has died down they are reversed,” the British peer said.

“We go back to square one, that’s happened several times during my observation of Bahrain since the early 90s, so I believe that unless we get political reform in the direction of human rights and democracy we are never going to get human rights involving Bahrain,” he said.

“I believe the precondition for reforms is political reform,” Avebury emphasised. …source