Middle East

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to say a few words about the dire situation in Bahrain, which has been overshadowed by the crises in Syria and Palestine but which demands a proportionate share of the attention of Parliament and the Foreign Office.

Last February, disturbances erupted in Bahrain as the people tried to assert their democratic and human rights against the al-Khalifa hereditary dictatorship. The rulers brutally attacked demonstrators, arrested 1,300 people and tortured their leaders and others held incommunicado for weeks on end, killing five of them in custody, and all in a pattern of total impunity. They clamped down on freedom of expression, closing a major newspaper, blocking websites and blogs and dismissing hundreds of suspect dissidents from their jobs.

Faced with mounting international criticism, the dictator appointed the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, BICI, headed by the distinguished jurist Cherif Bassiouni, to report on the events of the uprising and its aftermath. BICI produced a 500-page report substantially confirming the allegations made by national and international human rights organisations. It made numerous recommendations, all of which, at the launch of the report, the King said that he accepted. He appointed a further commission to monitor implementation, due to report next Tuesday. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, gave the regime much credit for this process, which I see as merely an attempt to deflect and postpone the effects of the uprising.

Some of the most critical recommendations are being ignored. The convictions of political prisoners, who did not advocate violence, have not been reviewed, nor have their sentences been commuted. Victims of incommunicado detention and torture have not received compensation. Hassan Mushaima, secretary-general of the Haq Movement, is still serving a life sentence after weeks of incommunicado detention, torture and trial before a kangaroo court, and the same is true for Abduljalil al-Singace and Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, foremost human rights activists. All three have spoken several times at seminars on Bahrain that I have chaired in the Palace of Westminster and I have never heard them advocate violence. They are dedicated to the principle of peaceful change, difficult though it may be in a society where the dictatorship holds all the cards.

The official line peddled by the Foreign Minister, Khalid al-Khalifa, another scion of the ruling family, is that there are not any political prisoners. Will my noble friend ask Sir Nigel Rodley, one of the BICI commissioners, to confirm that the,

“fundamental principles of a fair trial, including prompt and full access to legal counsel and inadmissibility of coerced testimony, were not respected”,

in the trials of opinion leaders? Will my noble friend join with IFEX in the call to immediately and unconditionally release Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and all the other political prisoners, and will they further ask the regime to negotiate with them on compensation for their ordeals?

Sad to say, the lessons of the past year have not been learnt. The security forces still use excessive force against demonstrations, resulting in loss of life. Twenty-two year-old Fadhel al-Obaidi died last Saturday after he was hit on the head by a teargas canister and beaten, kicked and punched by security men as he fell to the ground; last week an infant, Yahya Yousif Ahmed, died because his mother had suffered no fewer than eight teargas attacks on the family home during her pregnancy; and a woman in her 70s, Sakeena Marhoon, died in hospital after repeated inhalation of toxic gases thrown by security forces into her home several times in recent weeks. Will the Foreign Office protest about the continued use of excessive force and, particularly, the use of lethal gases?

Trials are continuing, too, of students and staff from the University of Bahrain and of some of the 42 doctors originally convicted by the security court. The crackdown on freedom of expression continues. Reporters Without Borders says that Bahrain goes in for a remarkable array of repressive measures: technical, judicial and physical censorship methods; keeping the international media away; harassing human rights activists; arresting bloggers and netizens, one of whom died in detention; smearing and prosecuting free-speech activists; and disrupting communications, especially during major demonstrations. To avoid scrutiny, the regime has postponed a visit that had been agreed by the UN special rapporteur on torture. It has forced the cancellation of visits by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch by imposing unacceptable conditions on them and it has made it impossible for international journalists to carry out their normal newsgathering activities in the country.

Above all, there is no sign of the ruling family loosening their grip on power. Yes, there is a two-Chamber Assembly, but the Government are entirely nominated by the al-Khalifas, with all important Ministers drawn from within the family, including the Prime Minister—the King’s uncle—who has held the post for more than 40 years.

When my honourable friend Mr Alistair Burt visited Bahrain in December, he made it clear to all groups that they should,

“seize this moment for reconciliation and broader reform”.—[Official Report, 9/2/12; col. WA 98.]

How can that be when leaders of opinion are in prison and their followers are gassed and beaten by the al-Khalifas’ mercenaries from Pakistan and Syria? Will my noble friend condemn the policy of giving those mercenaries citizenship in a bid to alter the demography of the state? Will he urge the regime to allow that freedom of expression without which reform is a remote and unattainable aspiration? The cosy relationship that we cultivate with these dictators helps them to stay in power. It is time to reform our policy to give meaning to our professions of encouragement for democracy, human rights and the rule of law.