The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has critized Bahrain for the torture of political prisoners. According to the HRW report, over 3000 people are imprisoned for political reasons.
“Bahraini authorities have failed to stop torture and failed to address the culture of impunity that fosters torture,” the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in the 659-page World Report 2016.“The much-ballyhooed reforms will remain false advertising until Bahrain stops jailing activists and opposition leaders, holds officers accountable for serious abuses like torture, and gets serious about judicial and security service reform,” she added.
Bahrain has been engulfed by low intensity since the Arab Spring uprisings reached the island-state in February 2011, with the protesters calling for the fall of the Al-Khalifa royal family. The Saudi military intervened to stop the overthrow demonstrating its hypocrisy since it supported other uprising movements, like those in Syria.
People who had been detained at the Criminal Investigations Directorate between 2013 and 2015 said they were tortured, according to the report.
They described a range of methods, including electric shocks, prolonged suspension in painful positions, severe beatings, threats to be raped and killed, forced standing, exposure to extreme cold, and sexual abuse.
