Human Rights Developments

Human Rights Defenders

The Role of the International Community

No human rights organizations were permitted to operate in Bahrain. The government continued to deny requests by international human rights organizations to conduct fact-finding missions, and reportedly threatened defense lawyers with disbarment if they provided information about arrests and security court trials to the press or to international human rights monitors. The Bahrain Human Rights Organization (BHRO) and the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Bahrain (CDHRB), operating abroad, compiled information on detainees, deaths in custody, and other issues, and campaigned for resolutions critical of the government’s practices at meetings of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and other fora.

In February 1998, in a publication entitled “Human Rights in Perspective,” the government asserted that “for the last three-and-a-half-years Bahrain has faced a classic twentieth century insurrection,” which it “has handled throughout with considerable restraint and evenhandedness by the rigorous application of the rule of law, balancing the interests of public order with the need to uphold individual human rights and dignities.” It went on to state that “there is particular concern at the abuse of the exercise of basic human rights such as freedom of speech as a cover for the dissemination of inflammatory rhetoric and the deceptions of fraudulent terrorist propaganda groups claiming to promote human rights within the international human rights movement.”