Bahrain Mirror: The Bahrain Forum for Human Rights sent a letter to the Director General of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Georgieva Bokova, asking her to review UNESCO's stance towards the King Hamad prize for the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Education, pointing out that the Bahraini authorities are exploiting the prize to cover up its violations of professional and humanitarian rights of Bahraini teachers.

"While UNESCO celebrates World Teacher's Day, Mahdi Abu Dheeb, President of the Bahrain Teacher Association (BTA) is found in Bahraini prisons and those who tortured and mistreated him have not been held accountable yet," the letter stated, stressing that Bahrain continues to exercise the policy of political oppression and discrimination against the educational cadres, which devastated their role in achieving sustainable development.

"A lot of people working in the educational field were subjected to different kinds of violations over political and sectarian reasons. Some were arbitrary dismissed from their jobs, arrested, detained and prevented from bonuses, post-graduate scholarships or arbitrary deducing their salaries. Teachers were prevented from career opportunities, which transferred the educational environment into hostile environment that is unsafe for them, especially after being highly targeted due to exercising their freedom of expression," the letter further read.

The forum highlighted the role that UNESCO and other international institutions have to play in enhancing the cultural rights, providing good education to everyone and enhancing cultural diversion and dialogue between cultures and that of peace. This requires serious pressure on Bahrain to reform the educational sector in a way that complies with the international standards of education.

Arabic Issue