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Mendez said that the decision \u201cdoes not enhance transparency with regard to the situation in the country nor demonstrate a commitment to redress impunity regarding any violations. Rather the authorities seem to view my visit as an obstacle rather than a positive factor to the reform process.\u201d<\/p>\n The tiny gulf kingdom has faced unrest since the start of popular protests<\/a> on 14 February 2011, which have now left 88 dead, according to<\/a> Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR).\u00a0 The US State Department recently <\/span>released a report<\/a>\u00a0evaluating human rights globally, and outlined Bahrain’s troubles with keeping up with its commitments to human rights. The report said that the country’s government has<\/a> “limited freedom of speech and press through active prosecution of individuals under libel, slander, and national security laws; firing or attacking civilian and professional journalists; and proposing legislation to limit speech in print and social media.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Bahrain says that reforms are underway, but their effect remains to be seen:\u00a0according to Human Rights Watch<\/a>, Bahrain’s authorities “have failed to investigate and prosecute high-level officials responsible for serious human rights violations.” To top it all off, the group also reports that there have been “more than 300 formal allegations of torture and ill-treatment.”<\/p>\n Even though there\u2019s no room for UN experts in Bahrain, it looks like the doors are wide open for another Bahrain Grand Prix. This Monday, Formula 1 head Bernie Ecclestone said<\/a> he would be pleased to extend the country\u2019s contract for another five years.<\/p>\n “I feel they do a super job and don’t see any problems”, Ecclestone told the BBC.<\/p>\n Let’s recap last weekend’s race: BCHR has reported\u00a0a total<\/a> of 96 arrests in the lead up to the race — with 16 protesters arrested the day of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Protests took place<\/a> in 20 of the troubled country’s villages, with clashes between protesters and security forces. An ITV news crew was forced<\/a> to leave Bahrain right before the race, after reporting on protests — even though they had the appropriate accreditation. During last year’s race, three Channel 4 journalists were arrested and deported<\/a> while covering a protest, but officials said that they were cast out for covering protests without media accreditation. I wonder what the excuse was this year?<\/p>\n Last year’s race drew crowds of protesters, who were met with brutal show of tear gas and bird shot pellets from security forces. One man, Salah Abbas Habib, was killed<\/a> during protests. Bahrain\u00a0did\u00a0<\/em>charge<\/a> a police officer with murdering Habib, but his case is sadly the exception. In 2011, the race was canceled after 35 people were killed during the country’s crackdown on popular protests at Manama’s now-demolished Pearl Roundabout. \u00a0Even though this year’s race went forward, every year this seems to come with a worrying cost.<\/p>\n Sounds like a problem to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bahrain\u2019s top news during the past 48 hours say a lot about the troubled country: glitzy races are welcome; experts on torture are not. Bahraini officials yesterday claimed that UN special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, had cancelled his upcoming visit \u201cindefinitely\u201d. Funnily enough, the special rapporteur has denied this claim, saying that the government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4060,13527],"tags":[7433,7405,4395,13740,4587,517],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109366,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92621\/revisions\/109366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Demotix](\"http:\/\/uncut.indexoncensorship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/1969417.jpg\")
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