By Warren Strobel
WASHINGTON: Bahrain’s efforts to build national reconciliation after it crushed street protests in 2011 have stalled, and the U.S.’ Gulf ally has not implemented recommendations to protect freedom of expression, including nonviolent dissent, according to a State Department report obtained by Reuters.
In the report, which was delivered to the U.S. Congress this week, the State Department says that Bahrain has made progress toward implementing reforms recommended by an independent commission, but “more work remains to be done.”
The report, which was delayed for months, appears to represent muted criticism of a strategically-located country that hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
The human rights record of Bahrain, where a Shi’ite majority is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, has been criticized by the United States, Britain and rights groups.
In a series of moves over the past three weeks, authorities closed down the main Shi’ite opposition al-Wefaq Islamic Society, doubled the prison sentence on the group’s leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, detained prominent rights campaigner Nabeel Rajab and stripped Ayatollah Isa Qassim, Bahrain’s Shi’ite spiritual leader, of his citizenship.
A State Department spokesman on Monday said Washington was “alarmed” by the move against Qassim.
It was not immediately clear whether the department’s report on Bahrain was completed before the most recent events.
“While there have been some positive reforms in Bahrain, they are dwarfed by a pattern of torturing prisoners and by recent government actions to silence opposition political leaders, to persecute human rights defenders, and to revoke the citizenship of a leading cleric,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, reacting to the report, said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
“These abuses further limit what few remaining opportunities exist for peaceful dissent in that country,” Leahy told Reuters.
Bahrain’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about the report with Bahrain’s foreign minister on Wednesday, spokesman John Kirby said.
The report gauges Bahrain’s implementation of recommendations made by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. The commission was established to investigate the events of February and March 2011, when authorities, with help from Saudi Arabia, crushed an uprising by Shi’ites demanding a bigger role in running the country.
Bahrain denies any discrimination.
The report cites numerous steps it says Bahrain’s government has taken, including rebuilding demolished mosques, investigating claims of torture, training security forces in human rights and providing protections for detainees.
But in some areas, Bahrain has interpreted the commission’s recommendations narrowly, the State Department said.
Most Bahrainis arrested in 2011 for crimes involving political expression have been released, the report said. But it added, “the government of Bahrain continues to charge and prosecute individuals with offenses involving political expression, including some who have not advocated violence.”
Brian Dooley of the nonprofit group Human Rights First criticized the report.
“Releasing such a tepid criticism in the middle of the most ferocious crackdown against opposition and human rights leaders in five years leaves the State Department, again, looking like it can’t face the reality of Bahrain’s mess,” Dooley said.
(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy, editing by G Crosse)
Reuters
