Alwaght- The
Bahraini regime
has intensified pressures on protestors and is torturing
detainees through harsher methods with a green light from the West and silence
from the international so called “human rights” organizations.
Bahrain’s main opposition bloc, al-Wefaq, has warned against the plight of inmates kept in the al-Khalifa regime’s notorious Jaw prison.
The notorious Jaw prison, Bahrain’s central detention facility, is where the regime keeps hundreds of political people behind bars.
The opposition group said that over 1,300 prisoners have been beaten by prison guards in the last week, when security forces attacked protesting prisoners inside the jail.
“The situation inside the Jaw prison is worrying, especially with prisoners being prevented from family visits and phone-calls,” said al-Wefaq Liberties and Human Rights Department (LHRD).
"Beating, hanging handcuffed, using electric shock, sexual harassment of prisoners, forcing inmates to stand up for hours with their hands cuffed and their eyes blindfolded, and forcing the detainees to sleep with their hands tied are among the common torture methods used in al-Khalifa prisons,” said Seyed Ali al-Moussavi, a member of Bahrain’s Human Rights Center.
Al-Moussavi said that the demands of the detainees’ families from the interior ministry to pursue the torture cases and improve the situation of prisoners have remained unanswered.
The LHRD said it has called on the International Red Cross to take immediate measures to protect the prisoners.
It also called for the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the incidents that took place inside the prison last week.
On March 10, Bahraini police forces fired birdshots at protesting prisoners in the facility and used tear gas against them.
Separately, the LHRD confirmed 155 cases of mistreatment against detainees in various prisons across Bahrain since the beginning of 2015.
Meanwhile, the Women Affairs Department of the
opposition party called for immediate international action to end regime
violence against female protesters.
Nearly 50 Bahraini women have been arrested and
16 others injured in attacks by regime forces so far this year.
Since mid-February 2011, thousands of pro-democracy protesters have held numerous demonstrations in the streets of Bahraini cities and villages, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.
Families of Bahraini political prisoners say their children and relatives are suffering from horrible torture and sexual abuse in Al Khalifa regime jails.
Some families said tortures and abuses occurred even at the interrogations in al-Howdh al-Jaf prison.
They said regime forces blindfolded the prisoners there and used electric shocks at their genitals; “They let go of them when they confess to prepared confessions against themselves,” the report quoted a relative of a prisoner.
The paper also quoted several people who spent some time in regime jails as saying that they were forced to stand fully naked for hours of interrogation which in some cases lasted for days.
The prisoners in many cases suffered
from sleep deprivation and constant torture, including beating at sensitive
parts of their bodies and electric shocks, for consecutive days and nights.
Until this day, the Bahraini regime
continues to neglect treating the wounded and the sick, and holds them in
prisons that do not take into consideration their health condition and basic
rights.
The Manama regime’s crackdown on peaceful protests has intensified since the arrest of opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, who is the secretary general of al-Wefaq.
Salman was arrested late last year on charges
of seeking regime change and collaborating with foreign powers. He has strongly
rejected the charges.
Scores of Bahrainis have been killed and hundreds of others injured and arrested in the crackdown on peaceful demonstrations since 2011.
Since then, Western powers, who call themselves the protectors of “human rights”, ironically have been always supporting al-Khalifa regime, and rarely do we hear any statement condemning al-Khalifa regime’s acts towards Bahraini protestor and prisoners.
Also the public opinion and international “human rights” organizations have been relatively silent since the breakdown in Bahrain. And even if some individuals wanted to report on the “human rights” conditions in Bahrain, and the prisons in specific, they are not granted any permission to enter Bahrain, as what happened with Juan Mendez, UN special rapporteur on torture.
The Bahraini regime still refuses to allow Juan Mendez, from visiting Bahrain. Mendez has been repeatedly blocked from entering Bahrain and yet the world remains silent.
