Bahrain Mirror: Sayed Ahmed Al-Wadaei, the director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), made a statement at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday (September 22, 2015) in which he tackled the abuses that the indigenous Bahrainis are being subjected to in the island kingdom.

In the statement he delivered under clause 5 before the council during its 30th session, Al-Wedai said: "The Bahraini government has worked on erasing the culture and history of the indigenous Bahrainis," pointing out that "the government does not promote the indigenous Bahraini heritage sites."

In this context, he tackled the education policies that are based on discrimination as "most of Bahraini Shiite students have been prevented from receiving their Shiite religious education." The authorities refuse to upgrade the religious education system in official schools in a way that allows the study of other religions and Islamic sects or adopting comparative education. The religious education curriculum in schools affiliated to the Ministry of Education is restricted to teaching religion within the Sunni jurisprudence, although Shiites constitute the majority.

He also highlighted that the authorities "demolished 38 significant mosques and religious sites for the indigenous Bahraini aiming at erasing their history."

Arabic Issue