Index on Censorship condemns the sentencing human rights defender and Index award winner Nabeel Rajab to three years in prison
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Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) was taken into custody by Bahraini authorities today after a court sentenced him to three months in prison for allegedly defaming the citizens of the village of Muharraq on Twitter. (more…)
Nabeel Rajab, BCHR - winner of Bindmans Award for Advocacy at the Index Freedom of Expression Awards 2012
OPINION
This week Bahrain continued its game of cat and mouse with human rights defender Nabeel Rajab, releasing him once more on Wednesday after re-arresting him on 6 June. The outspoken activist and president of Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) has been arrested, released, and arrested again — all in the past two months. Although Rajab is now free, he still faces four charges, two of them for posts he made on the social networking site Twitter, and two others related to organising protests. Charges were brought against the activist for allegedly insulting and publicly defaming the Sunni citizens of the village of Muharraq on Twitter, as well as insulting an authority on the popular social networking site. According to his lawyer, Rajab will stand trial on 9 July.
Rajab’s fearlessness in speaking out against the regime’s human rights abuses mean that the Index on Censorship Award winning activist could very well land in prison again. Still, it is promising that Rajab’s release came after the government announced that it would finally begin compensating families of the 35 individuals killed during a brutal crackdown on the country’s anti-government protests that began on 14 February last year. Shortly after the announcement, human rights activist Zainab Alkhawaja was injured after a tear gas canister was allegedly fired directly at her hit her in the thigh. Alkhawaja is the daughter of well-known dissident and founder of BCHR Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, who is currently serving a life sentence for participating in anti-government protests last year.
Last November Bahrain released the findings of its much vaunted Independent Commission for Inquiry (BICI) but the country’s sluggish progress in implementing the report’s recommendations calls into question the country’s commitment to genuine reform. Whenever Bahraini officials are confronted with evidence of human rights violations they respond with statements about reform and dialogue but little action is taken.
On Thursday, 27 United Nations member states released a joint statement calling on the Human Rights Council to push Bahrain to end human rights violations. Noticeably missing from the list of countries — which included Switzerland, Mexico, Denmark, and Norway — were close allies the United States and the United Kingdom, despite having made statements about helping the country commit to reform. Bahrain responded to the statement by saying that the information in the statement is “inaccurate” and that the countries that signed the statement did not understand the “reality” of the human rights situation in the country.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index. She tweets from @missyasin
Just hours before England secured a place in the Euro 2012 quarter finals, sports enthusiasts and free expression advocates gathered at the Free Word Centre on Tuesday, discussing whether human rights has any place in the world of major sporting events, from Bahrain’s Grand Prix to the Olympics.
On the panel was award-winning sports journalist and author Mihir Bose, Chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association Clarke Carlisle and historian Martin Polley.
The evening began with a discussion of Euro 2012 amid reports that racism is rampant among the host countries’ football culture.
Northampton Town footballer Clarke Carlisle said that, with Euro 2012, Uefa failed in its duty of care to minority players and supporters. He was a great believer of football’s power to get messages across, he said, but it was important to understand the realities of the situation, including that football, along with most other sports, had been corrupted by money. Most players have other priorities: when asked whether players would notice the absence of UK government ministers’ (a protest at Ukraine’s human rights record), Carlisle answered: “Not one iota.”
Uefa, the International Olympic Committee and other sporting bodies have become big businesses. They view racism as society’s problem, not something they have to deal with, said Mihir Bose. “Are these organisations fit for purpose?” he asked. If sport wants to operate as a big business, it must adhere to the rules of corporate governance that other companies must accept.
Martin Polley railed against what he referred to as the “psuedo-religion” of the Olympics, where governments, sporting body officials and others celebrate the so-called “good” implicit in the Games, the idea that the Olympics can somehow benefit society. Reminding the audience how sport can be used to support political aims, he pointed to the 1936 Berlin Games, where, after a brief attempt to bring the “bourgeois” event to an end, the Nazi party took full advantage of the propaganda opportunities at its disposal.
The panellists reflected on the ways corporate sponsors will dominate the London landscape during the Olympics, mocking Coca-Cola’s “pouring rights”, the prospect that an individual could be fined for wearing clothing featuring logos outside the Olympic “family” of sponsors and the London 2012 bidders’ promise of a “clean city”, free of any billboard featuring a non-Olympic sponsor.
With the legacy of the Olympics looming in Londoners’ minds, the acknowledgment that racism was still prevalent in British football and the bleak picture of East London trampled over by the Olympic’s organising committee (Locog) as described by the Counter Olympic Group, members of which were in the audience, there were more than a few reasons to be a little gloomy. But with such informed and fascinating panelists and fantastic audience engagement, there was also a feeling that there was a lot more to do and a lot more to learn.
And then England won 1-0.
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