Islam Times - UN not serious on rights abuse in Bahrain

Islam Times - The UN Human Rights office has criticized Bahrain court for death and long jail sentences of anti-regime protesters.

Press TV has interviewed with Husain Abdulla, Bahraini Human Rights Activist, to share his opinion on this issue.

Press TV: How far does this criticism go because so far those that who really do have influence with the Bahraini regime have kept silent?

Abdulla: Well, these criticism are toothless, not have any implication power. If the United Nations is serious about holding human rights violations in Bahrain to the standard of other countries, they should start negotiating arm embargo against Bahrain or on Bahrain where the government of Bahrain will see it difficult to buy arms and weapons that are used against civilian population.

As to that, these courts are actually illegal under international law. They do not hold any norms or regulations when it comes to civilian's court and these civilians were tried into a military court where some of them did not even see their lawyers till the day that the judge ruled against them.

Press TV: Well we get back to this arms embargo, but right now doctors and nurses have been at the forefront of these harsh sentences by the military courts. Why is that? And what kind of a message is the regime trying to send?

Abdulla: The message from the Al Khalifa regime is that we are tough and we are going to face these uprisings, these demonstrations, these calls to remove the regime or to topple the regime with harsh sentences, with torture, with imprisonment for life, even death sentence.

So the message from the regime is that we are strong and we are going to continue this battle with our own people. So you have a war going on between the people of Bahrain and the ruling fads which only consists of the Al Khalifa family.

Press TV: The US is considering a proposed armed sales of the armored Humvees and missiles to Bahrain worth 53 million dollars. Were those working within the US, like yourself, pressuring the US government to stop supporting the regime in Bahrain and consequently does repression of the protesters?

Abdulla: Well we are working on a campaign where pressure the different members of the Congress to put a congressional hold on this weapons, arms package sale to Bahrain.

I mean the message that the United States is sending to the people of Bahrain is this arms deal goes through that regardless of the human rights violation that this regime is contemplating will continue to support it and such message shows the hypocrisy of the American foreign policy when it comes to revolution and democracy movement in the region. As a matter of fact it looks like the United States is leading a counter revolution in the region against the movement towards democracy and justice in the Muslim world.