The International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims

On the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims: the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) pledges to continue to support the victims and their families and try to realize their right to the truth.

 

Today, the world celebrates the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims in the hope that a culture of adherence to the principles of justice will be adopted by working on knowing the truth regarding human rights violations and striving to combat them.

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.

The right to the truth is often referred to in the context of flagrant violations of human rights and gross violations of humanitarian law; the demand of victims of extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, missing persons, kidnapped children, and victims of torture or their families’ demand to know what happened to them or their relatives which is defined as the demand to know the truth. More implicitly, it is to right to know the truth without any deficiency in relation to the facts it reveals, the specific circumstances that surrounded it, and who was involved in it, including knowledge of the circumstances in which the violations occurred, as well as their causes.

In Bahrain, for example, many citizens are disappointed by the continued denial by the Bahraini authorities of their responsibility for crimes against human rights and disrespect of the dignity of victims. Since 2011 the frequency of violations increased following the popular movement in February 2011 until the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission Inquiry (BICI) report were issued on 23 November 2011, which demonstrated the systematic crimes committed by members of the Bahraini security services and held them directly responsible. However, the authorities did not implement the most important recommendations.

Domestic and international human rights organizations have worked to expose the violations throughout these years in an effort to reveal the truth with professionalism in order to address the human rights crisis in Bahrain and restore the dignity of victims, to prove the harm suffered and to attest the violations and crimes from violators of rights, especially crimes outside the law, revocation of citizenship, torture, sexual harassment, etc.

On this day, we recall all victims of torture and prominent human rights defenders who lie behind prison walls and are facing ill-treatment, prominent defenders who were subjected to ill-treatment in detention, including returning them to unhealthy prison conditions after undergoing surgery and being exposed to infections, amongst there are Nabeel Rajab, Abdul Hadi Al-Khawaja and many others.

On this occasion, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) calls on the government of Bahrain

  • to work to stop all violations by members of the security services; –
  • investigate crimes of torture, killing and sexual harassment;
  • hold those who committed and ordered these crimes accountable:
  • compensate the victims fairly and equitably and;
  • commit to implementing the recommendations of the BICI report and the United Nations’ UPR and international human rights bodies and commissions’ recommendations.

We also pledge at the Center to continue to support the victims and their families and try to realize their right to know the truth and protect those who seek to raise their voices.