Just days after
Britain raised human rights activists’ condemnation for welcoming King
of Bahrain at Queen’s jubilee lunch, it has hypocritically announced
leaders with human rights abuse records will be banned from Olympics.
"Where there is independent, reliable and credible evidence that an individual has committed human rights abuses, the individual will not normally be permitted to enter the UK,” Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne said in an answer to a written query by the MPs.
This is while the continuation of bloody crackdown on protests by the al-Khalifa regime in Bahrain is now the focus of international human rights groups and even the United Nations.
The Human Rights Watch said in the weekend that the UN Human Right Council should scrutinize Bahrain’s deplorable record during the country’s Universal Periodic Review on May 21 to ensure “Bahrain’s routine suppression of basic political rights” as well as “grave human rights violations” are accounted for.
Human Rights Watch also criticized the international response to the bloody crackdown in Bahrain saying the voice of the international community regarding Bahrain’s manifold violations has been subdued.
On Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Council said Bahrain has agreed to consider 176 recommendations on its human rights situation.
This is while Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry under the very al-Khalifa regime acknowledged in a report in November 2011 to a number of human rights abuses including systematic torture of detainees yet the Human Rights Watch said they have not been implemented.
“The king established an independent inquiry to investigate these potential abuses, but it failed to fully implement the inquiry’s recommendations - namely holding senior officials accountable for crimes such as torture or for failing to free protesters who were jailed for exercising their right to free expression and peaceful assembly,” it said.
Against such a colorful backdrop, a major question hangs in the air: whether the British government’s Olympic ban includes the Bahraini king who dined with the Queen just last week.
And if yes, whether British officials were unaware of the al-Khalifa crimes when they welcomed King Hamad in London.
AMR/HE
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