News / Persian Gulf

Bahrain revokes citizenship of over 810 dissidents: Rights group

Thursday, 07 February 2019 4:55 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 07 February 2019 4:59 PM ]

This file picture shows the entrance to the building of Bahrain’s Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs in the capital Manama.

A non-governmental rights group says Bahraini officials have revoked the citizenship of hundreds of people after convicting them of alleged terror charges as the Al Khalifah regime presses ahead with its crackdown on political dissent in the Persian Gulf kingdom.

Javad Firooz, the chairman of the Salam for Democracy and Human Rights group, said in a post published on his official Twitter page on Wednesday that the Manama regime had stripped 815 people of their citizenship since 2012.

The remarks came on the same day that Bahrain's Fourth High Criminal Court stripped eleven political dissidents of their citizenship after finding them guilty of “forming a terrorist cell and receiving military training in Iraq.”

On January 31, the same Bahraini court had sentenced an anti-regime activist to death and passed life imprisonment against 23 other political dissidents. The court stripped all the activists of their Bahraini citizenship as well.

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Manama had accused all the defendants of launching an alleged bomb attack in the area of the western coastal village of Dumistan back in 2014, which resulted in the death of a security officer.

Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the country in mid-February 2011.

They are demanding that the Al Khalifah regime relinquish power and allow a just system representing all Bahrainis to be established.

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Manama has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent. On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to assist Bahrain in its crackdown.

Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of the Al Khalifah regime’s crackdown.

On March 5, 2017, Bahrain’s parliament approved the trial of civilians at military tribunals in a measure blasted by human rights campaigners as being tantamount to imposition of an undeclared martial law countrywide.

Bahraini monarch King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah ratified the constitutional amendment on April 3, 2017.

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