On 16 September 2015, the Head of International Relations and Women & Children's Rights Advocacy Nedal Al Salman of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), delivered an oral intervention during the 30th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva:
IDO, along with Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain, the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, and the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, would like to thank the Working Group for their diligent efforts to address the issue of enforced disappearances. We join the Working Group in expressing concern at the routine practice of enforced disappearance in a number of States.
For example, in Bahrain, we regularly receive and document reports from families that security forces subject their family members to short-term enforced disappearances upon arrest. Bahraini security forces conduct home raids in plain clothes and masks and arrest individuals without warrants. These detainees are then rendered incommunicado for periods ranging from several hours to ten days. It is particularly during this period that victims are most vulnerable additional human rights abuses,often including acts of torture.
This practice is not new to Bahrain. In 2011, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry reported 196 cases of enforced disappearance, during which detainees were abused and forced to sign false confessions. These confessions were then used to arbitrarily detain victims for sentences up to and including life in prison.
In its most recent report, the Working Group requested“additional information on the specific steps taken by the Government to prevent and terminate alleged cases of short-term enforced disappearance,” and on measures taken to ensure detainees’ relatives are promptly informed of their relatives’detention.
We therefore ask if the Working Group has received any response from Bahrain toward alleviating the practice of short-term enforced disappearance. We additionally ask the Working to advise on practical steps that States such as Bahrain may implement towards transparently and substantively combating the practice of short-term enforced disappearance.
Thank you.
