Protestors campaign for human rights reform in Bahrain

Members of the international community are appealing for human rights infringements in Bahrain to be combatted as the 21st session of the UN Human Rights Council releases its final recommendations, due to be adopted today (19 September). Index on Censorship has joined over 100 NGOs, UNHRC member states and UN council members in releasing an international appeal to urge Bahrain to accept the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations from Geneva. The statement called for the unconditional release of  human rights defenders, bloggers, and peaceful opposition activists campaigning to exercise their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Meanwile, the UK parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee is to launch an inquiry into human rights abuses in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, according to an announcement made during a parliamentary briefing organised by Index on Censorship and The All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group. Labour party MP and committee member Ann Clwyd announced the plans during the 12 September briefing, where Maryam Alkhawaja, acting head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), condemned Britain’s attitude towards Bahrain’s human rights abuses. Alkhawaja called for diplomatic and economic sanctions from the UK, saying ”The Bahraini regime has reached a point where they believe they have acquired international immunity”.

In an article for Index on Censorship, Alkhawaja criticised the UK for allowing Bahraini official Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa to attend the London 2012 Games. Calling for transparency and accountability, she said: “It is shameful that the UK and the US refused to sign onto a joint-statement issued by 27 countries this year, condemning human rights violations. Despite damning evidence that continues to mount both countries have been shamefully silent on this topic — and this must change.”

In November 2011, The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) was mandated by the King of Bahrain to investigate the human rights offences  after February 2011, where thousands of Bahrainis took to the street to protest human rights abuses and campaign for political reform. Among the recommendations, the BICI called for 300 people jailed for peaceful campaigning to have their cases transferred to civil court and for the authorities responsible to be held accountable.

However, since the investigation was launched, allegations of arrest for peaceful protest and torture as a means of extracting information have continued. The British government’s funding of munition implies political passivity towards Bahrain and indirectly opposes insurgency; estimates by the BCHR total the number of political prisoners to 3,000 as of today. Prominent human rights activists such as Nabeel Rajab — who was sentenced on 16 August 2012 to three years’ imprisonment for organising peaceful gatherings  — are still jailed in Bahrain.

Daisy Williams is an Editorial Intern at Index on Censorship

Read more on this story: 

Bahraini Human rights defender Maryam Alkhawaja denounces Britain’s indifference

Sara Yasin discusses why it’s time to stop doing business with Bahrain

BAHRAIN: BLOOD ON THE TRACK

The post Index urges Bahrain to accept UN recommendations appeared first on Index on Censorship.

In 1985 the Pope — then Cardinal Ratzinger — wrote that the Index Librorum Prohibitorum — the list of works historically banned by the Catholic Church — still has “moral force”. The Index was abandoned in 1966 yet it provides a list of those authors whose books have been banned by the Church over four centuries, including great writers and philosophers such as Rabelais, Diderot, Balzac, Zola, Andre Gide and Jean-Paul Sartre (the French rate highly in the Index).

Ratzinger — in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith — wrote: “A decision against distributing and recommending a work, which has not been condemned lightly, may be reversed, but only after profound changes that neutralize the harm which such a publication could bring forth among the ordinary faithful.”

In other words, honest, workaday Catholics cannot be trusted to read some of the great thinkers of the European tradition because of the harm that might be done to them by engaging with ideas of liberty, equality, sexual freedom or existentialism. Priests, on the other hand, were permitted to read some of this material, for educational purposes. One set of rules for the clergy and another set for the faithful.

The Pope’s address earlier this year to English and Welsh bishops advanced his view that Catholic clerics have a degree of free speech that is denied to their followers. In response to fears that human rights law would prevent Catholic adoption agencies from excluding gay parents, he exhorted the bishops to maintain ‘longstanding British traditions of freedom of expression’ by speaking out on behalf of the Catholic Church. This ‘freedom of expression’ sounds remarkably similar to the old concept of “talking”. He simply means that one powerful group (Catholic bishops) should speak to another powerful group (lawmakers) in an attempt to lobby for changes in the law.

He claimed that the bishops would be “giving voice to the convictions of many people who lack the means to express them”. Why do they lack the means? Is it because of longstanding British traditions of free speech? Or because the Catholic Church does not include a “talkback facility”; does not encourage internal dialogue; does not hold priests to account; and does not allow ‘the ordinary faithful’ to read, think, and speak for themselves?

Of course, the bishops have their free speech too — without it, there would be no freedom of religion in the UK. But this freedom cuts both ways. And if the Pope expects to be heard on this visit, he will have to learn to listen, and to trust in the capacity of the “ordinary faithful” to engage with — and if they wish, act upon — ideas which undermine not simply his faith, but his authority. I believe that this is the real meaning of freedom of expression. But perhaps the Pope believes otherwise. I look forward to hearing his views.

www.englishpen.org

The post Papal bull? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

That result comes as no surprise. The other contestants were not serious candidates and their parties owe their parliamentary seats to Kagame’s ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The RPF-controlled government prevented three opposition parties from competing and arrested two presidential aspirants on a range of charges including “genocide ideology” – a vague, catch-all crime frequently used to prosecute any criticism of the RPF.

The elections also took place against a backdrop of fear and intimidation in the wake of two shadowy assassinations in Rwanda (the decapitation of an opposition politician and the shooting of a journalist) and the attempted assassination of General Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa, where he had recently gone into exile.

The biggest loser in these elections was Rwanda’s independent media, which was already struggling to survive. In February, a Rwandan court sentenced three Umuseso editors and journalists to prison for defamation. In April, the Media High Council ordered the six-month closure of two popular independent newspapers, Umuseso and Umuvugizi, under the restrictive press law of 2009, stating that “they continuously reflected false and inciting reporting aimed at creating a sense of fear amongst the Rwandan people” and that they published material “intended to undermine the reputation of the Head of State [i.e. Kagame].”

A week later, the editor of Umuvugizi fled Rwanda after receiving threats. He was followed a month later by the editor of Umuseso. Umuvugizi journalist Jean-Leonard Rugambage was gunned down outside his house in June after his newspaper published a story linking senior government officials to General Nyamwasa’s attempted assassination. In July, the editor and two journalists with Umurabyo were arrested (two are still in detention). The same month, police seized copies of The Newsline (published by Umuseso journalists in exile).

Independent journalists have been killed, arrested, intimidated, driven into exile, and fined before, but rarely in such numbers over such a short period. The government justifies this wholesale assault (like previous restrictions) on the need to prevent recurrence of the 1994 genocide, in which three-quarters of the Tutsi minority was exterminated. Indeed, the government constantly invokes the spectre of genocide and the role played by the “hate media” in inciting genocide. In an aggressive speech at the April 2010 genocide commemoration, Kagame attacked Rwandan journalists for complaining about restrictions on their freedom of expression: “What freedoms are you teaching me? If you can’t take full responsibility for what you did … in the politics that killed 1 million people.” In reality, though, many of the editors and journalists from Umuseso and Umuvigizi are Tutsi who returned to Rwanda after the genocide and subsequently became disillusioned with the RPF.

The government also selectively charges independent journalists with being “unprofessional” — even though pro-government journalists sometimes publish equally sensationalistic stories. Donors and non-governmental organisations have little to show for well-intentioned efforts at media training and capacity-building as each new cohort of journalists wind up either co-opted or exiled.

After the 2003 elections, some diplomats and donors told me that Kagame’s landslide win would give him and his party the confidence to introduce political pluralism and media freedom. That was another foolish exercise in hope over (decades of) experience with Africa’s big men. Since 2003, the UK – Rwandan’s largest bi-lateral donor — has pumped some £250 million into the country, two-thirds of it in the form of direct budgetary support. The UK has also given £5 million over the past four years to promote good governance in several government institutions. One recipient of that largesse is the National Election Commission, which has yet to run a free and fair election. Another is the Media High Council, which suspended Umuseso and Umuvigizi and publicly supported last year’s two-month suspension of the BBC’s Kinyarwanda service for “unacceptable speech” about the genocide.

Despite all of the UK’s investment in Rwanda, there is even less political pluralism and independent media today than there was in 2003. Presumably, this is not what Andrew Mitchell, the new Secretary of State for the UK’s Department for International Development, has in mind when he promises the increasingly cash-strapped British taxpayer they can expect “value for money” with overseas aid.

At least, it was made clear in a House of Commons debate in July that DFID would not renew its funding for the Media High Council.

Still, Mitchell recently told The Daily Telegraph’s Mike Pflanz that the Rwandan government is “entitled to be cut quite a lot of slack.” Any more slack and there won’t be any independent journalists left in Rwanda.

Lars Waldorf is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights (University of York) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence

The post Rwanda: UK-subsidised media repression appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post Legal defeat for MoD appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The post Britain: cabinet minutes to be released appeared first on Index on Censorship.