A leading Bahraini dissident, whose father was imprisoned for life for his role in pro-democracy protests, has claimed that taking Formula One to the country increases the number of human-rights abuses.
Maryam al-Khawaja has renewed calls for the Formula One chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone, and the FIA president, Jean Todt, to remove the Bahrain race from the Formula One calendar, believing it legitimises a regime that has been heavily criticised by human-rights organisations and campaigners for press freedom.
The race was added to the schedule in 2004 although it was cancelled in 2011 at the height of sometimes violent protests against the government by pro-democracy campaigners.
"When we first started talking about this we would be told that you shouldn't mix sport and politics. In Bahrain, it's not just that the human-rights situation is bad and therefore Formula One shouldn't come to Bahrain. But having Formula One in Bahrain specifically causes human-rights violations," said al-Khawaja, who was raised in Denmark and returned to Bahrain in 2001 with her father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja.
"The amount of arrests that happen before, during and after Formula One definitely accelerates. We've had women arrested, we've had children arrested."
The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, of which al-Khawaja has been acting president since her predecessor, Nabeel Rajab, was detained by the Bahraini authorities, has written to Ecclestone, Todt and leading sponsors to renew its request that they cancel the race.
It said that races were held under conditions that "effectively amounted to martial law" and that holding the race in Bahrain legitimises human-rights abuses.
Many activists and protest leaders were arrested in the run up to the race, it added, some of whom spent several months in prison. The cases of Salah Abbas Habib, shot dead by security forces, and Rinhanna al-Mousawi, who was arrested and remains behind bars, were also raised.
Todt said that the politics of the country were of no concern to the FIA. "The reality is that no international sporting federation has the authority to become involved in any political conflict of any kind," he said in a reply sent earlier this month. "The decision to hold a competition in any given country is based above all upon the desire to foster and promote the development of motor sport around the world."
Al-Khawaja said that following the cancelled race in 2011 and a report by the United Nations-backed Bahrian Independent Commission of Inquiry that found systemic use of torture and a litany of human rights abuses, the authorities had become emboldened by the sense it was "business as usual"
Amnesty International said that the Bahraini authorities "should not be using the Grand Prix as an excuse to trigger yet another clampdown on those trying to denounce human rights abuses in the country"
Its Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Said Boumedouha said: "Rather than embarking on another public relations exercise, the best way for the Bahraini authorities to mark the Grand Prix would be to announce the release of all prisoners of conscience, including Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and Nabeel Rajab."
He added: "An announcement that the Bahraini government was initiating wide-ranging independent investigations into all allegations of the torture of protesters, making the full results public and stamping out impunity, would be far more meaningful than any amount of hype around a Formula One fixture."