Amnesty slams US & UK for ‘emboldening’ Bahrain amid ‘disastrous decline in human rights’

‘Bahrain has cracked down on government critics over the past year, torturing, beating, and sexually assaulting at least 169 people, Amnesty International said, accusing the UK and US of turning a blind eye to “horrific abuses.”
Amnesty said in a report entitled ‘No one can protect you: Bahrain’s year of crushing dissent’ that it had documented how the government arrested, tortured, threatened, or banned from travel nearly 170 activists, opponents, and their relatives from June 2016 to June 2017.
Bahrain has repeatedly refuted allegations of systematic rights abuses.
“We have heard horrific allegations of torture in Bahrain,” Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Philip Luther, countered in a statement. He noted that all of the allegations should be “promptly and effectively” investigated, while those behind the abuses “brought to justice.”
The report accused “most governments,” notably Washington and London, of keeping silent over the human rights abuses in Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based and where Britain’s Royal Navy has a major facility.’
Read more: Amnesty slams US & UK for ‘emboldening’ Bahrain amid ‘disastrous decline in human rights’