International Community – Your Silence is Deafening – Stop The Violence

Bahrain: International pressure needed now to halt spiralling human rights crisis
21 April 2011

More than 500 people, the vast majority Shi’a Muslims, have been arrested in the last month.

Bahrain’s allies must take stronger action to address the rapidly worsening human rights crisis in the small but strategic Gulf state, Amnesty International said today as it released a new briefing paper on the continuing suppression of peaceful protest.

In Bahrain: A Human Rights Crisis, Amnesty International calls on governments with close ties to Bahrain to press for an end to the crackdown on those calling for change.

“North American and European governments, so vocal recently in espousing the cause of human rights in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, need also to speak out loudly about what is going on in Bahrain” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“To avoid the charge of double standards, they must be much more robust in pressing the Bahraini authorities to uphold their international human rights obligations.” …more