Bahraini activists commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 2011 Bahrain uprising amid continued severe repression. Since 2017, Bahraini authorities have banned all independent media in the country and disbanded all major opposition groups. They have failed to hold officials accountable for torture and ill-treatment. No monitoring mechanism is independent of the government.
Three inmates died in Bahraini prisons in 2021 due to suspected medical malpractice. Sanitation conditions remain dire in Bahrain’s overcrowded prisons, which have experienced two major COVID-19 outbreaks. Prison authorities violently suppressed a peaceful sit-in at Jau Prison, and security forces summoned for questioning and arrested individuals who took part in protests calling for the release of family members.
There are currently 26 inmates on death row, all facing imminent execution. Since the government ended its moratorium on executions in 2017, it has executed six people, most recently in 2019.
The Bahraini government continues to deny access to independent human rights monitors and UN special procedures, including the Special Rapporteur on Torture.
Freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly
Bahrain amended its press law to further restrict online content by requiring news and broadcasting sites to register and be approved by the Ministry of Information and by banning electronic media from publishing content that goes against the “national interest” or the constitution.
According to a Freedom House report, between June 2020 and May 2021, at least 58 people were arrested, detained or charged for their online activities.
In July 2021, it was reported that Bahrain, already a suspected customer of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, had entered phone numbers of potential targets into a database that was then leaked. In August 2021, Citizen Lab reported that the iPhones of nine Bahraini activists had been hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware between June 2020 and February 2021. NSO Group has repeatedly denied the reports.
Thirteen prominent opposition activists are serving lengthy sentences since their arrest in 2011 for their roles in pro-democracy protests. They include Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and Hassan Mushaimah and Abduljalil Al-Singaseh, leaders of the opposition group Al-Haq, all of whom are serving life sentences.
Al-Shingaseh began his hunger strike on July 8 to protest against the inhumane prison conditions and to demand that his family be returned the books he wrote while in prison that were confiscated by prison authorities. His family said he lost nearly 20 kilograms between July and September and suffers from a chronic illness for which he is not receiving adequate treatment.
Sheikh Ali Salman, leader of Bahrain’s largest but now forcibly dissolved opposition political group, Al Wifaq, is also serving a life sentence after the Court of Cassation upheld his conviction in January 2019 on charges of spying for Qatar.
In June 2020, authorities released prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab from prison to serve the remainder of his five-year sentence for speech crimes under the 2017 alternative penal code.
Bahrain has no independent media presence since the Ministry of Information suspended the country’s only independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, in 2017. Foreign journalists have little access to the country, and Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups are routinely denied entry.
Death Penalty
The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) and Reprieve found that 51 people have been sentenced to death since the 2011 uprising. Of those, 26 are currently on death row and all are at imminent risk of execution having exhausted their legal remedies. In July 2020, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of Mohammed Ramadan and Hussein Ali Musa, despite credible evidence that they had unfair trials and that their convictions were based on confessions coerced through torture.
According to BIRD and Reprieve, of the 51 people sentenced to death since 2011, at least 31 were convicted under Bahrain’s overly broad anti-terrorism laws, including 20 for alleged torture offences.
Bahrain has executed six men since ending a moratorium on executions in 2017.
Security forces and prisons
At least three prisoner deaths have occurred in 2021, blamed on a lack of proper medical care.
On April 6, the Police Media Centre announced that Abbas Malala had died of a heart attack, but Malala’s family claims he had suffered from chronic illnesses during his 10 years in prison, and other prisoners have told Bahraini human rights groups that Jau prison authorities had refused to provide medical treatment to Malala before he lost consciousness.
Mallallah’s death sparked protests in Bahrain, including a sit-in on April 17. Jau Prison There have been a series of demonstrations protesting malpractice by prison authorities, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Bahraini human rights activists, authorities summoned at least 10 protesters for questioning on April 6 and detained family members of several prominent political prisoners. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern that security forces reportedly used “unnecessary and disproportionate force” to break up a peaceful prison sit-in on April 17 and cut off many prisoners from communication with the outside world.
On April 8, the public prosecutor’s office announced the release of 73 detainees under the alternative penal code in an apparent response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 9, a COVID-19 outbreak in the notoriously overcrowded Jau prison led to the death of Hussein Barakat. Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior has not released precise information on the number of infected people, but human rights groups say many detainees have contracted COVID-19 and that detainees are not being provided with personal protective equipment, adequate medical care, or access to family members.
On July 25, Hasan Abdelnabi, who had sickle cell disease, died at Drydock Detention Centre amid allegations that he was denied proper medical care.
Authorities have not been able to credibly investigate and prosecute officials and police suspected of committing serious violations, including torture, since the 2011 protests.
Children’s rights
Police beat and threatened to rape and subject them to electric shocks after arresting children in protest-related cases in early February 2021, ahead of the 10th anniversary of Bahrain’s uprising. Prosecutors and judges denied the children’s parents or lawyers the presence of their interrogations, ordered their detention and facilitated the abuse. A government report denied that security forces beat, insulted, or threatened to rape the boys.
In a positive development, on February 14, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa approved Law No. 4/2021 on Restorative Justice and Protection of Children from Abuse. The law raises the age of criminal responsibility from 7 to 15, defines a child as anyone under 18, and provides for the establishment of special courts and separate detention facilities for children.
Bahrain has not implemented a 2019 recommendation by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to “explicitly prohibit the use of corporal punishment in all settings”, and its 2012 Children’s Law does not mention corporal punishment.
Arbitrary Deprivation of Citizenship
In 2019, King Hamad restored the citizenship of 551 people, and the courts restored the citizenship of another 147. Bahrain amended its citizenship revocation law in 2019 to limit the power to revoke citizenship to the Cabinet. The King and the judiciary no longer have the authority to unilaterally revoke the citizenship of Bahrainis for national security or terrorism offences. Citizenship revocations since 2012 have been made by court, royal decree, or order of the Ministry of Interior. Around 300 people whose citizenship the authorities have revoked in recent years are ineligible for Bahraini nationality, making most of them stateless.
Migrant Workers
Abuses against migrant workers, particularly migrant domestic workers, worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, authorities paid the salaries of 100,000 nationals working in the private sector between April and June but did not provide similar benefits to migrant workers, who make up the majority of Bahrain’s workforce. Migrant workers reported facing dismissal, reduced or unpaid wages, and eviction from their homes.
Bahrain introduced a uniform standard contract for domestic workers in 2017 that details their work, rest periods, and holidays. But the contract does not limit working hours, set a minimum wage, or state which days off workers are entitled to.
Bahrain has included illegal immigrants in its COVID-19 vaccination programme.
Women’s Rights, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation
Bahrain’s family law discriminates against women in terms of divorce and inheritance rights. Article 353 of the penal code immunizes perpetrators of rape from prosecution if they marry the victim. Bahrain’s parliament proposed abolishing the article in 2016, but the cabinet rejected the proposal. Article 334 of the penal code reduces penalties for perpetrators of so-called honor crimes.
In August, women launched a campaign using the Arabic hashtag “Nationality is my right and my children’s right,” demanding the right to pass on Bahraini nationality to their children on an equal basis with men.
Bahrain’s penal code criminalizes adultery and sex outside of marriage, but this is a violation of privacy rights and disproportionately harms women and migrant women. Women who become pregnant outside of marriage or report rape can be prosecuted for consensual sex outside of marriage. There is no law that explicitly criminalizes same-sex sexual intercourse, but authorities use vague penal code provisions banning “indecency” and “immorality” to target sexual and gender minorities.
In December 2018, Bahrain amended its labor law to prohibit discrimination based on sex, origin, language and creed, as well as sexual harassment in the workplace. However, the law does not mention sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or age.
Key international actors
The Bahraini government has not responded to requests for visits by the UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights Defenders in 2012 and 2015, nor to requests for visits in more recent years by the UN Special Rapporteurs on torture, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly.
Bahrain continues to take part in military operations in Yemen as part of the Saudi-led coalition, which is committing serious violations of the laws of war.
The United States maintains a large naval base in Bahrain. In June, the U.S. State Department reported that more than $6 billion in arms sales are underway to Bahrain under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The United States thanked Bahrain for helping evacuate Afghans after the Taliban overran the country. In August, the Bahraini government allowed evacuation flights from Afghanistan to land at the country’s airport.
On March 24, 22 human rights organisations and trade unions, as well as 57 British MPs, called for F1 to launch an independent investigation into allegations of human rights abuses linked to the Bahrain Grand Prix, which has been held in Bahrain since 2004.
In March, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Bahrain’s human rights violations and calling for the EU to take a firmer stance, but this has yet to be acted upon. In April, on what would have been the 60th birthday of Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, a human rights activist imprisoned in both Bahrain and the EU, the EU’s Special Representative for Human Rights reiterated his call for his release.
