Bahrain Mirror: The Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society stressed that the human rights, humanitarian and political situation in Bahrain today is darker and much worse.

In its open statement to the 43^rd session of the Human Rights Council, held in Geneva between February 24 and March 20, Al-Wefaq said that Bahrainis are experiencing difficult situation that keeps intensifying and that the conditions are becoming harsher to the extent that citizens cannot express their pain as a result of the measures and restrictions imposed on them, including the following:

First: The Bahraini authorities are waging a severe war and a relentless attack on all forms and levels of freedom of opinion and expression. Bahrain lacks the lowest standards of freedom, to the extent that citizens are not even allowed to express their pain or cry over the pressure imposed on them.

Second: The authorities prohibit demonstrations, protests, and all forms of expression of rejection, and they practice the utmost levels of oppression and tyranny against any citizen who thinks about expressing his opinion. All authorities, especially the judiciary, are used to prosecute the right to gathering and peaceful assembly, and they issue harsh sentences against those expressing protest, even in a very simple way.

Third: The authorities prohibit political action by dissolving and liquidating the most important and prominent political parties (political societies). The authorities have confiscated this right in a violation of the Constitution, and they have kept a number of other societies only in order to claim the existence of political action, which is unreal. The societies are prevented from engaging in any political activity that does not contribute to improving and beautifying tyranny.

Fourth: The authorities have imposed the political isolation law. This law reflects a high level of political marginalization and blockade. It aims at preventing any active political figures or forces from participating in the elections or expressing a political opinion. In addition, the authorities deprived again any member of the dissolved opposition political societies of belonging to any civil society institution.

Fifth: Bahrain suffers from a real constitutional problem related to the absence of a constitutional consensus. The government imposes an unconsented constitution and rejects any talk about the need of a contractual constitution, and this issue is the basis of the political problem due to the absence of the social contract between the ruler and the ruled.

Sixth: The government practices sectarian discrimination in an unprecedented way in the world, to the extent that it deprives a wide group of citizens of intuitive human rights such as the right to work, to own property in certain regions, to education, specialization and obtaining scholarships and other freedoms and natural rights, for reasons related to their religious affiliation.

Seventh: The government works vigorously and expeditiously on demographic change, in a dangerous scheme to replace the demographic identity of Bahrain through the free and illegal distribution of hundreds of thousands of Bahraini nationalities and passports to foreigners, in order to create a new people loyal to it.

Eighth: The authorities practice all forms of cruel collective punishment against citizens, including arbitrary executions and arrests, disappearances, forced deportations, unfair trials and brutal torture in interrogation rooms. Tens of thousands are summoned for interrogation, threatened, intimidated, and denied natural rights in order to silence citizens by force.

Ninth: Thousands of prisoners of conscience are held in the Bahraini regime's prisons, which were never empty, despite international and local demands. Thousands of men, women, children, religious scholars, academics, political leaders, human rights activists, media professionals and community activists languish behind the bars of the regime's prisons.

Tenth: The government exercises war on religious freedoms in various ways and means that did not leave any action or activity for the Shiite community. It has targeted the highest religious authority for Shiites, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim (80 years old). It stripped him of his nationality, tried him, besieged his house for 700 days and prevented him from treatment, which forced him to leave the country for treatment, and now he is unable to return because he is stateless. In addition, the government dissolved the Islamic Ulama Council and exerted utmost pressure to withhold and ban religious freedoms. The government also arrested religious scholars, and pursued everything that represents a religious opinion that is inconsistent with tyranny and its domination.

Eleventh: Eliminating civil society through various methods, including abolishing and liquidating some civil society institutions, imposing boards of directors by force, as happened in the associations of teachers, doctors, lawyers, and others, splitting associations, as happened to the General Federation of Workers Trade Unions in Bahrain, by creating new unions, or recently preventing anyone who is not close to the government from entering civil society institutions.

Twelfth: The government agreed reluctantly on establishing the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), under the pressure of serious crimes against human rights. However, it categorically refused to implement the real recommendations of the BICI, and practiced a blatant attempt to circumvent the recommendations and throw them in the trash, which is the same method it adopted for the decisions and recommendations of the Human Rights Council in more than one session.

Thirteenth: According to a well-thought out plan, the authorities established a number of sham and non-serious institutions, entities, and committees for camouflage and in order to manipulate the international community and human rights institutions and hide violations and abuses through these institutions. The most notable of those institutions are the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Co-existence, the Ombudsman, the Prisoners and Detainees Rights Commission, the National Institute for Human Rights, and other nominal committees and entities.

Fourteenth: The government continued to prevent all UN special rapporteurs and special teams from entering Bahrain to prevent them from finding out the truth of what is happening in the country.

Fifteenth: Continuing to block and ban independent press, after closing the only independent newspaper in Bahrain, Al-Wasat, blocking dozens of websites, and arresting the tweeters and sentencing them to prison. It got to the point where those who liked a photo, information or stance, and even followed people who express opinions were prosecuted, and any outlet in the media and electronic space was shut down.

Sixteenth: Pursuing cultural and social activities to the extent that the authorities closed the Islamic Enlightenment Society (Al-Tawiya) and the Islamic Al-Risala Society, and exerted numerous pressures against charitable and social work.

Seventeenth: The authorities practice hate and contempt speech on a daily basis through the official and semi-official media, with the aim of withholding the truth, intimidating, scaring and preventing others from listening to the demands and rights of citizens, which are represented in the urgent need for democratic transformation, social justice and building the state of institutions, law and public freedoms.

Eighteenth: All international rankings of the indicators of democracy, freedom, justice, media, corruption and others still place the Bahraini authorities at their worst levels, according to studied scientific classifications. The rest are desperate paid attempts; the Bahraini authorities pay millions to international public relations companies to improve their image.

Nineteenth: The Bahraini government refuses dialogue with the opposition and the active forces in Bahrain despite thousands of invitations for that. It refuses negotiation or understanding with the people, and bypasses all mediations and international, regional and local mediators.

Twentieth: The government depends a lot on the large arms deals of the Gulf States with the major countries in order to exploit and buy the stances of these countries while practicing the worst levels of repression, in order to improve its image and prevent any democratic transformation while continuing with corruption, looting, tyranny, authoritarianism and dictatorship.

Arabic Version