Human Rights Watch has issued a damning 64-page report on the state of rights, justice, and reform in Bahrain, declaring the failure of the regime “to free peaceful dissenters and hold abusive officials accountable”.
In November 2011 — eight months after the start of mass protests — King Hamad and his officials promised to implement the findings of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. However, HRW finds from verdicts and court documents:
Bahrain’s courts play a key role in maintaining the country’s highly repressive political order, routinely sentencing peaceful protesters to long prison terms. But members of security forces are rarely prosecuted for unlawful killings, including in detention, and the few convictions have carried extremely light sentences….
(There is a) stark contrast between prosecutions of serious human rights violations by security personnel on the one hand and prosecutions for “crimes” based on speech and peaceful assembly-related activities on the other….
Two years after the report was issued…, leaders of the 2011 protests remain in prison, some sentenced for life, and judges are convicting new defendants of “crimes” based solely on the expression of dissenting political views or the exercise of the right to peaceful assembly.
Documenting the court cases in detail, HRW concludes with a call on the regime to release political prisoners and to “expunge all convictions based on the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association, or peaceful assembly, and all convictions based on confessions where there is any suggestion of abuse”.
(PHOTO: Rally on 3rd anniversary of mass protests, February 2014)