This November marked the first anniversary of the issuance of the report of the Independent Commission of Bahrain. Last year, this Commission was formed on the order of the King of Bahrain to study and investigate the events of February and March 2011. At the end of their investigation, Sharif Bassiouni, the international judge and 4 of his colleagues presented the 500-page report to King Hamad. Although this Commission was appointed by the government of Bahrain, it finished its task within its duties in a manner which did not cause any damage to the legal and international reputation of its members, and their unbiased report was even welcomed by Bahrain's opposition. In this report, excessivel use of violence in dealing with the protesters, torture of the arrested demonstrators by security forces and tens of other types of violation by the police and the military and security forces were registered. The King of Bahrain who himself had appointed this Commission to prepare a report, on 23rd of November, 2011 and after receiving the results of the investigation, promised the people through media that he would act upon the recommendations of this Commission. 26 recommendations to improve the human rights situation and observe people's civil rights and make reforms in this country were presented in this report.
The US and Britain, the two major allies of al-Khalifa, praised the bravery of the King. The opposition and the people of Bahrain and human rights defenders looked forward for the implementation of the Commission's recommendations. One year has passed since the issuance of this report. During this period, King Hamad appointed a national committee to implement Bassiouni's recommendations. While the people and the opposition did not see any sign of seriousness of the rulers to enforce these recommendations, this committee announced that the recommendations were implemented!
The National Commission ended its work on March 20, and concluded that implementation was “comprehensive and far reaching” and “touched all aspects of Bahraini life.”
Although the government of Bahrain ended the critical security situation and closed down military tribunals, suppression of people in the streets and torturing the prisoners continued. The civil courts approved the verdicts of the military tribunals, including the unjust verdicts with regard to the physicians and the medical staff, thus, a number of hard working medics returned to prisons.
In October and November of this year, the government of Bahrain by taking two other unjust measures proved to its people and the international community that it did not pursue serious reforms. The first measure was banning the demonstrations and protests, and the second was revocation of the nationality of 31 political activists, a strange punishment common in the Persian Gulf littoral states.
But in late November another incident happened which damaged the reputation of al-Khalifa. Judge Bassiouni broke his one year silence and declared that the measures taken by the government of Bahrain to implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission is inadequate.
The Egyptian-American jurist M. Cherif Bassiouni, told Human Rights Watch that the government’s implementation of the BICI recommendations has been inadequate. “A number of recommendations on accountability were either not implemented or implemented only half-heartedly,” Bassiouni said. “The public prosecution has yet to investigate over 300 cases of alleged torture, some involving deaths in custody, and there has been no investigation, let alone prosecution, for command responsibility, even at the immediate supervisory level, of people killed in custody as a result of torture.”
“You can’t say that justice has been done when calling for Bahrain to be a republic gets you a life sentence and the officer who repeatedly fired on an unarmed man at close range only gets seven years,” Bassiouni said.
In the anniversary of the Independent Commission of Investigation’s report, the Amnesty International, which during the past two years has been monitoring the situation in Bahrain, in a harsh statement, which also criticized the US and Britain, stated:
The introduction of the reform process is now “moribund” and that Bahrain “is in full scale repression,” and risks sliding into “protracted unrest and instability.”
“We have found that actually the situation is much worse than it was months ago, it’s really deteriorating. We’re talking about at least 24 killed since BICI issued its report last year, a ban on all protests by the end of October and only a week ago a revocation of nationality of 31 opposition activists,” the author of the report, Covagonga de la Campa said.
The interesting point in the report of the Amnesty International is its criticism of the US and Britain's position in ignoring the human rights violation in Bahrain and the lack of serious measures taken by these two countries.
Many of these reports and analyses which were published in the Western media in November have mentioned the lack of improvement in the human rights situation in Bahrain. In particular, during the recent months, the British government has, several times, hosted the Bahraini officials signing a new security agreement and selling arms to this country.
There is no doubt that the very mild statements of the West with regard to the events in Bahrain and their only expression of concern without taking any serious measure, and at the same time, continuation of military and security relations with the rulers of Bahrain not only have not encouraged them to enforce serious reforms but also have convinced them that they can tolerate mild criticisms with no consequences and suppress the opposition with violence and force.
The US administration and the British government have, undoubtedly, ignored widespread human rights violation in Bahrain by al-Khalifa and have not shown sincerity in supporting democracy in the Middle East. In October, the Foreign Policy Commission of the House of Commons in its annual report criticized the government of Britain for its silence against the suppression of the peaceful protests of the people by the security and military forces in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain is a small country but it is a huge test for London and Washington to prove their commitment to the slogans of supporting democracy and human rights.
Source:bahrainobserver