Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Kow-towing to dictators

For defending democracy and human rights in my home country, Bahrain, during the Arab spring,  Sayed Alwadaei, director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy.endured torture, imprisonment and was forced into exile in the UK. 

The Bahraini government revoked his citizenship in 2015 in response to my human rights work. This “punishment” tears families apart, because Bahraini law prohibits mothers from passing their citizenship to their children. The UK has been one of the leading countries fighting statelessness worldwide. Yet when it comes to their allies – Bahrain hosts a Royal Navy base – the government barely note the cases.

The Middle East minister Alistair Burt has just visited Bahrain, and knows the ordeal Sayed's family is suffering at that government’s hands. Yet the UK has done nothing but whitewash the Bahraini government’s record of abuses.  Despite bringing the case to their attention repeatedly, and despite the condemnation of six UN experts, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office does not appear to have raised the case. Burt suggested  a complaint to the UK-trained police ombudsman in Bahrain – a body that UN torture experts have condemned as ineffective and non-independent. The Foreign Office provided no help.

Fuller story of Sayed's plight here

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