U.S. State Department 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom: Bahrain Documenting a government saturated with abuse of power

On June 2, 2022, the U.S. State Department published its 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom: Bahrain. What is clear after reading this report is the ruling family in Bahrain uses religious discrimination as a tool in the preservation of its authoritarianism and employs public displays of inter-religious co-existence to overshadow its human rights abuses.[…]

House Raises Concern over Bahrain Government’s Human Rights Abuses, Calls for State Department Report on Upcoming Bahrain Election

The House Appropriations Committee expressed deep concerns over ongoing human rights violations in Bahrain and required the US State Department to prepare a report detailing its actions to ensure free and fair parliamentary elections in Bahrain in November 2022.  The Committee’s actions were included in the Report to accompany the Fiscal Year 2023 State, Foreign[…]

Self-inflicted wounds: Courting the good-will of Middle East dictators

News that President Biden is traveling to the Gulf region this month to meet with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a betrayal of his promise to put “human rights at the center of our foreign policy, of the pro-democracy activists and journalists who have[…]

Selling American Democracy to Middle Eastern dictators

The unconditional support the U.S. gives to the dictators in Saudi Arabia – a relationship where the U.S. turns a blind eye to every kind of imaginable crime and medieval behavior – has devolved to a new phase of Saudi dictators being allowed to openly buy continued support from individuals. A sovereign investment fund led[…]