FRI 29 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Mar 7, 2017
Source: The Daily Star
Bahrain files lawsuit to dissolve secular political party
Associated Press
DUBAI: Bahrain’s government filed a lawsuit Monday to dissolve a secular political party, the state-run news agency said, months after the country’s main Shiite opposition party was banned.

The country’s Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Ministry accused the Waad party in a statement of “incitement of acts of terrorism and promoting [the] violent and forceful overthrow of [the] political regime.” The announcement, coming just a day after Bahrain’s Parliament approved a constitutional amendment allowing military tribunals to try civilians, recalled the clampdown that followed the nation’s 2011 Arab Spring protests.

“The society glorified convicted terrorists and saboteurs who used weapons, detonated bombs in killing and wounding several security [personnel] and also undermined citizens and residents’ physical safety as well as damaged private and public properties,” the statement carried on the state-run Bahrain News Agency said. “The society continuously violated the principles of the democratic political process, basic freedoms and people’s participation in the process.”

The Justice Ministry offered no specific examples in its statement. The government did not immediately respond to a request from the Associated Press to elaborate on the ministry’s allegations.

Waad declined to immediately comment, but it long has been the target of authorities. Established in 2001 after its founder returned home after more than three decades in exile, Waad became a liberal bloc that reached out to both Shiite and Sunni reformers.

But it found itself targeted in 2011 in the government’s clampdown on the opposition. Its offices were targeted by vandals and twice set ablaze. Its then-leader Ibrahim Sharif ended up serving more than four years in prison after being convicted along with other activists by a military-led tribunal of plotting to overthrow the government.

Bahrain already has dissolved the country’s largest Shiite opposition group, Wefaq, and doubled a prison sentence for its Secretary-General Sheikh Ali Salman.

Government forces, with help from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, crushed the 2011 uprising by Shiites and others who sought more political power. Since the beginning of a government crackdown in April, activists have been imprisoned or forced into exile. Independent news gathering on the island also has grown more difficult.

The kingdom had made reforms following a government-sponsored investigation into the 2011 demonstrations and the crackdown following it, but several of them have been overturned in recent weeks. Along with allowing military tribunals, the kingdom has restored the power of its feared domestic spy service to make some arrests. Authorities say the rollbacks are necessary to fight terrorism as a series of attacks, including a January prison break, have targeted the island. Shiite militant groups have claimed some of the assaults.

Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet and an under-construction British naval base.
 


 
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