Brussels: The US State Department’s top official on human rights is planning to return to Bahrain on Wednesday, nearly five months after he was ordered to leave the country, US officials said.
The official, Tom Malinowski, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, was visiting Kuwait on Tuesday, and he planned to travel to Bahrain with Anne W Patterson, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, the officials added.
On July 7, Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry demanded that Malinowski cut short a visit to the country, complaining that he had violated “conventional diplomatic norms” after he met with the leader of Al Wefaq, the country’s largest opposition party.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who arrived in Brussels on Tuesday for two days of meetings at Nato headquarters, called Bahrain’s foreign minister at the time to complain about the move, including the country’s insistence that a Foreign Ministry official attend all of Malinowski’s meetings with the opposition.
The United States has suspended some arms sales to Bahrain’s Defence Ministry until Malinowski is allowed to return there and Bahrain makes progress on human rights. Assistance to Bahrain’s Interior Ministry, which has been involved in cracking down on the opposition, has been suspended indefinitely, US officials said.
Bahrain has been a delicate issue for the United States. The Navy’s 5th Fleet, which operates in the Gulf and the Arabian Sea, has its headquarters there, and F-16s from Bahrain have joined the US-led air strikes against militants from Daesh, who have seized territory in northeast Syria and in northern and western Iraq.
The Obama administration has sought to maintain strong ties with Bahrain while urging it to respect the rights of the opposition movement.
Bahrain has been shaken by unrest since a 2011 uprising in which the Shiite-led opposition demanded greater political rights.
The State Department’s 2013 report on human rights said that the abuses there included “citizens’ inability to change their government peacefully; arrest and detention of protesters on vague charges, in some cases leading to their torture in detention; and lack of due process in trials of political and human rights activists, medical personnel, teachers and students, with some trials resulting in harsh sentences.”
Elections for the lower house of the National Assembly were held last month. Al Wefaq and other groups boycotted the vote, complaining that no progress had been made in a national dialogue on political rights.
The Obama administration is expected to reassess its suspension of some arms deliveries after Malinowski’s visit, and after evaluating the election process and the human rights situation in Bahrain.
