01 Feb 12 | Middle East and North Africa
Canadian Naser Al Raas was arrested and detained today after he attended a court due to hear his appeal against his five-year prison sentence. The 29 year-old IT-specialist had been in hiding since being sentenced on 25 October 2011, he feared returning to prison after he was tortured while in pre-trial detention.
Al Raas was arrested and tortured for participating in protests in February and March 2011, when thosands of Bahrani’s took to the streets. He was charged with spreading false news and inciting hatred against the regime.
Despite the Bahrain authorities frequently detaining people who attend court appointments, Al Raas’s fiancé Zainab told Index that her fiance felt safe to attend court for the first time after Canadian officials had condemned his sentence. On 26 January, the Canadian government called for Al Raas’s case to be “resolved expeditiously, particularly in view of Mr. AlRaas’ grave health concerns.” AlRaas has a serious heart condition, and his physician claim’s imprisoning his patient’s would place his life “in jeopardy”. AlRaas needs regular medication, and is susceptible to haemorrhages when he is injured. After his release on bail after 31 days in prison, AlRaas claimed prison officials repeatedly beat him on the chest which is scarred from two open-heart procedures.
The judge has allowed a request to allow Al Raas to see a cardiologist. Al Raas is now being held at Jaw prison, where a number of imprisoned activists are on hunger strike. Fourteen activist are on a one-week hunger strike protesting the Bahrani states vicious crackdown on activists and its continued detention of prisoners of conscience. Al Raas told his fiancee that if he was imprisoned he would join the prisoner’s action, many members of the Bahraini opposition have also joined the hunger strike in solidarity.
Al Raas’s appeal hearing has been postponed until 16 February. His lawyer told Index that he was “optimistic” about the appeal hearing, and he also he said that he pressed the judge for an earlier court date.
31 Jan 12 | Index Index, minipost
Fourteen imprisoned activists have begun a one-week hunger strike in Bahrain. The activists, who have been imprisoned since March 2011, are protesting the continuous crackdown on demonstrations in Bahrain. The health of several of the activists is at risk –human rights defender AbdulJaleel AlSingace who suffers from poliomyelitis, a nerve disease, previously suffered a heart attack whilst on hunger strike. Many prisoners, including those held in Jaw and the central region prisons, have announced plans to join this hunger strike.
31 Jan 12 | Middle East and North Africa
Last week, Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority wrote to Index, to address our criticisms of media censorship in Bahrain. Let’s go through their clarifications:
Bahrain continues to work closely with the media and to provide them with greater accessibility to cover events in country. This is reflected through the extensive on-ground coverage during the release of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (“BICI”) report from internationally renowned media outlets including BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera English and Arabic, Al-Arabiya, and many others in November, which was at the same time that the Index of Censorship (IoC) team was in Bahrain.
It is true that the Bahraini government allowed the international media and rights organisations into the country during the week of the BICI report. But coverage during that week does not necessarily indicate “extensive on-ground coverage”. The country initially allowed journalists to enter the country following the release of the BICI report, including the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof, who has been openly critical of Bahrain in the past. However, the transparency promised to the international rights community seemed to only be available for a limited period of time, as employees from three international rights organisations were barred from entering the country this month.
The Information Affairs Authority further demonstrated its commitment to “extensive on-ground coverage” by allowing 700 international journalists to attend the Bahrain International Air Show. Indeed, journalists from publications like Business Intelligence Middle East and Trade Arabia covered the show, which took place from 19-21 January. The air show was Bahrain’s first major international event since the start of unrest in February and March of last year, and protesters attempted to disrupt the show, designed to bring back investors to Bahrain — but the backdrop of social unrest was most likely no competition for journalists commissioned to write about the parade of planes, rather than police brutality on the ground.
The letter then goes on to inform us that Bahrain has been implementing the recommendations of the BICI report “publicly and transparently,” and that the implementation can be tracked online. My views on starting a committee to look into implementing the recommendations of a committee can be found here.
The letter ends by looking at Bahrain’s commitment to media openness. The BICI report made the following recommendation related to the media:
1724 (a) – To consider relaxing censorship and allowing the opposition greater access to television broadcasts, radio broadcasts and print media. The continuing failure to provide opposition groups with an adequate voice in the national media risks further polarising the political and ethnic divide.
The Information Affairs Authority then boasts that they have brought in media consultancy IMCA to improve Bahrain’s media based on the BICI’s recommendations, and bring it “up to international standards.” Sounds great — but like many of the plans for change, information on actual plans for implementation are sparse.
Full text of the letter:
27 Jan 12 | Middle East and North Africa
When Index on Censorship visited Bahrain on a fact finding mission late last year, officials repeatedly pledged to maintain a transparent relationship with the international community. Now that undertaking seems just another broken promise. Three international rights organisations have been denied entry this year.
The fact-finding mission investigated the state of free expression in Bahrain. We detailed our findings in a report released this week. In meetings with officials from the Ministry of Human Rights, the mission was promised that as long as the correct procedures were followed, we (and other organisations) would be allowed to enter Bahrain.
Earlier this month Bahrain refused to grant the visas to staff from Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First, asking that they delay until March. Despite having visas and a scheduled meeting with the US Embassy, a delegation from Freedom House was barred from entering the country on 19 January, only days before they planned to travel. Authorities asked that the organisation delay their trip until the end of February.
“I was very disappointed that I was unable to go”, Freedom House’s Courtney Radsch told Index. According to Freedom House, the mission’s was not related to political unrest in the county but part of a programme monitoring the empowerment of rural women started in 2010. Radsch said that the decision showed the “complete hypocrisy” of officials. In a blog post, Radsch quoted King Hamad assuring the international community that they would have any open door, saying “any government which has a sincere desire for reform and progress understands the benefit of objective and constructive criticism.”
A violent crackdown on daily protests continues, and despite the BICI committee’s recommendation that prisoners be released or employees be reinstated, many Bahrainis have been unable to resume their daily lives. Even the chair of the BICI commission, Cherif Bassiouni, who previously commended the King for commissioning the report, said that critics would be justified in calling Bahrain’s sluggish implementation of their recommendations a “whitewash“.
Meanwhile, members of the opposition are growing restless, and this week things took a bloody turn. Violence escalated between protesters and security forces Wednesday, as some younger opposition members attacked police officers. Wednesday’s violence reportedly resulted in four deaths, including that of Mohamed Yacqoub, 18. While human rights activists Index spoke to were insistent on peaceful protest methods, they warned of things taking a more violent turn if brutality against peaceful protesters were to continue after the release of the BICI report.
