Reaction to statement by Bahraini MPs

21/02/2013
Press release
ar en

On 15 February 2013, FIDH received a delegation of MPs from Bahrain in its permises in Paris to discuss the situation in the country. On February 19th, a wire from BNA claimed that "Mrs. Suhair Bal-Hassan, expressed her appreciation to the relevant human rights societies commending the Kingdom of Bahrain Government’s serious and effective steps in implementation of BICI’s recommendations and the latest recommendations of the Geneva Conference."

Contrary to this gross erroneous statement supposedly based on Members of Parliament’s statement, FIDH has actually expressed concern for ongoing grave and systematic human rights violations attributable to State authorities and involving political leadership’s responsability. These concerns are detailed in the most recent FIDH publications that were transmitted to the Bahraini delegation. Indeed, together with other NGOs monitoring closely the human rights situation in Bahrain, FIDH has expressed serious concern for lack of or ineffective implementation of BICI and UPR recommendations.

In particular, FIDH drawed attention to the repression against human rights defenders, including the ongoing arbitrary detention of its deputy secretary general Nabeel Rajab and reitarated its demand for his immediate and unconditional release. Such misquote is only one of many, in particular since the beginning of the popular uprising two years ago, intended to upgrade the reputation of the Bahraïni executive on the international arena. It should be granted no credit, but reinforce allegations and concern for human rights violations by the government, and reveal its anxiety to face its responsability for such violations. FIDH kindly advises the authorities to allocate the State’s ressources to effective remediation of the deep human rights crisis rather than to misleading and instrumentalisation PR campaigns.

At this stage one moto : Release immediately all prisoners of opinion including human rights defenders!

Gathered in Cairo on 19 February, human rights defenders from the MENA region joined FIDH in its call.

Read more