Dear President Obama,
I write to you from a Bahraini jail cell, and this message was never meant to go beyond its walls. Even though I have never advocated for violence nor harmed another living soul, I have spent 28 of the last 36 months in a Bahraini prison for actions that can only be counted as crimes in a nation that stifles free expression and criminalizes open assembly. I have documented my government’s use of torture. I have reported on civilian casualties in Yemen. I have held a different opinion than that of a king. In retaliation, I may spend the next ten years of my life in jail.
While my government punishes me for demanding an end to its assault on civil and political rights, other GCC states, especially Saudi Arabia, subject human rights defenders to harsher abuse. Their repression can be seen in the flogging of free speech activist Raif Badawi and the death sentence against the religious scholar and human rights advocate Nimr al-Nimr. Saudi courts even sentenced Raif’s lawyer, Waleed abu al-Khair, to 15 years in prison. We as human rights defenders are targeted for giving voice to the marginalized, people seeking to take the reins of their own destiny; our governments do everything in their power to prevent us from acting upon the best ideals of our conscience.
– From last year’s post: Jailed Bahraini Human Rights Activist Writes Open Letter to Obama from Prison
As Saudi Arabia has proven over and over, it pays to be a U.S. ally in the Middle East. It’s a designation which grants tyrants carte blanche to do whatever they want. Discriminate against minorities, punish dissidents with crucifixion, systematically violate every conceivable human right, etc, etc. As an example, recall what happened just last week:
Saudi Arabia Forces the United Nations to Remove it from a List of Child Killers
So while Saudi Arabia gets most of the attention due to its relative size, regional influence and particular affinity for barbarism, the Kingdom of Bahrain is not far behind.
The last couple of days makes this perfectly clear. As the AP reports:
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