March 4, 2005
I was gravely disturbed for the serious accusation made by the Bahraini Minister of Labor against me in his closing statement today during the session of CERD Committee.
The minister accused me of calling for the death of the Bahraini Prime Minister in my speech in a seminar after which I was arrested in September 2004. While the fact is that, in my speech, I connected deterioration of living condition in Bahrain to corruption of the government headed by the Prime Minister.
March 4, 2005
I was gravely disturbed for the serious accusation made by the Bahraini Minister of Labor against me in his closing statement today during the session of CERD Committee.
The minister accused me of calling for the death of the Bahraini Prime Minister in my speech in a seminar after which I was arrested in September 2004. While the fact is that, in my speech, I connected deterioration of living condition in Bahrain to corruption of the government headed by the Prime Minister.
I also mentioned in my speech that most people in Bahrain see the current government as an obstacle for economic reforms, they hold him responsible for gross violations of human rights during the previous era.
What the Labor Minister accused me of today was not even apart of the charges I faced at court. The charges were “instantiation of hatred and disseminating rumors by accusing the Government and the Prime Minister of corruption”. (Reference could be done on the case to reports by amnesty International, OMCT, FIDH, Frontline and Human Rights Watch)
In addition, the Minister said his statement as an answer to a question about the reason behind his decision to close the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, which was officially connected to a seminar on discrimination in 2003 and has nothing to do with what I said in the last seminar on poverty.
I would like finally to thank the distinguished experts for their efforts and good work.
Abdulhadi Alkhawaja
President
Bahrain Center for Human Rights