TEHRAN- The sham parliamentary elections in the Persian Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain have been strongly condemned as all opposition parties were banned from participating.

Those who could have contested the elections have instead been subjected to death sentences, sexual assault, beatings, sleep deprivation, and other graphic abuses. But as Manama hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, the vote was met with silence from Washington.

Bahrain is a constitutional monarchy where King Hamad Al Khalifa, the head of a tribe that rules over a nation, acts as head of state and parliament has very limited legislative powers. Before the elections, authorities removed tens of thousands of citizens from the “authorized voter lists”. Activists say the figure is higher.

The Bahraini armed forces backed by Saudi Arabia’s military has used an extraordinarily wide range of powers to crush a pro-democracy uprising that began in 2011.

Until today, political parties, their politicians, activists, rights groups, and protesters are among those who continue to face not just a heavy-handed crackdown, but a discriminatory one.

The Kingdom’s parliamentary elections on 12 November were held in an environment that rights groups have described as “political repression” following a decade in which the authorities have used torture to extract confessions from protesters mostly held in solitary confinement, imprisoned scholars from the Shia sect of Islam, revoked the citizenship of activists, infringed upon human rights, curtailed civil society, banned political opposition parties, shut down independent media.

In October this year, Manama withdrew from the Human Rights Council, a move that was strongly censured with critics saying it gave the Kingdom more freedom to crack down on civilians. 

This is in addition to a host of other disturbing rights abuses that normally tend to draw the attention of Western nations, the United States in particular. On this occasion, the White House chose to keep the sham elections as far away as possible from its public statements.
On the other hand, the murder of police officers in cold blood and the torching of public property in Iran, under the pretext of “peaceful protests” has been very high on the agenda of U.S. President Joe Biden and America's Western allies.

Rights groups say authorities have even ramped up their campaign to eliminate political opposition, banning opposition political parties that had existed legally before the 2011 popular uprising. Apart from banning opposition parties and independent media, the monarchy has also imprisoned and tortured prominent opposition leaders. One popular activist, Nabeel Rajab, was sentenced to five years for a social media post that criticized the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed bombardment of Yemen.

Today, the Kingdom lacks any non-imprisoned political opposition leaders or independent media that are allowed to criticize the ruling monarchy in public. Critical human rights organizations are unable to operate freely.

“Over the past 11 years, the Bahraini authorities have crushed all forms of dissent and severely clamped down on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association,” said Amna Guellali, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa.

Prisoners of conscience, including protest leaders from 2011 and Ali Salman, the head of the major opposition party al-Wefaq, which was among the leading political parties, authorities disbanded, are currently languishing in prison.

Bahrain’s highest religious authority and prominent scholar, called on citizens to boycott the parliamentary elections, saying any participation amounts to a betrayal of the blood of the many protesters shot dead on the streets of Bahrain for simply seeking freedom and justice.  

In a live address, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim added to the growing list of voices calling for a boycott, said “the responsibility of Bahrainis is to boycott the election, and participation in it is a betrayal,”

He noted that the Bahraini parliament acts in favor of the ruler and to the detriment of the Bahraini nation and that the parliament is a tool to exercise oppression, he said.

The top cleric’s residence in Bahrain saw a deadly military raid that forced the cleric to live in exile.

“How would it be possible to strengthen democracy in Bahrain, whilst elections have originally been designed to destroy it? This is an election whose doors are closed to those who seek democracy,” he pointed out.

Bahrain’s now dissolved al-Wefaq National Islamic Society says opposition groups, in a show of outright rejection of dictatorship and repression by the ruling Manama tribe, have unanimously agreed to boycott the elections.

In an interview, al-Wefaq’s deputy secretary-general Sheikh Hussain al-Daihi said “In light of the increasingly suffocating atmosphere, dictatorship of the ruling Al Khalifah dynasty, utter disregard to public demands and violation of people’s right to seal their own fate, foreign-based Bahraini opposition groups as well as social and political activists in the country have taken the decision not to cast ballots in the upcoming polls,”

In a statement, al-Wefaq also described the boycott of November 12 polls as a national duty, emphasizing that those ruling the Persian Kingdom hold absolute control over the electoral process and seek to install a weak legislature, whose main task would be to burnish the image of the corrupt Al Khalifah dynasty and cover up its human rights abuses.

According to rights groups the ruling monarchy retains its long-standing ban on the opposition parties that used to compete in elections prior to 2011. The government has banned al-Wefaq, the Shia-led party that used to win the most seats in the history of Bahrain’s current parliamentary system, Amal, a Shia opposition party that competed with al-Wefaq, and Wa’d, a non-sectarian opposition party.

These three parties oppose the 2002 constitution, which the ruling family unilaterally issued, but they did seek to change it by participating in the electoral process in a bid to bring some fairness and justice to the nation. The banning of parties that have peacefully sought to change the system of governance by legal means such as participating in elections is a flagrant violation of the right to freedom of association.

Further amendments in 2018 referred to as the “civil and political isolation laws”, allowed the ruling monarchy to ban members of the banned opposition parties, any representative who resigned from the parliament in the past, and anyone who has a prison sentence of more than six months on their record, many of them protesters and activists, from taking leadership positions in civil society organizations. 

While Bahraini protesters, both the Shia and Sunni sects, took to the streets following the 2011 uprising, authorities have concentrated their crackdown on the Shia, who make up the majority of Bahrain’s 1.84 million population, yet enjoy very little roles in institutional organizations.

The Shia population complains they are banned from joining institutional organizations and positions of authority or power.

This is at the heart of the protest movement against the ruling Al Khalifa regime. There is no fairness in a constitutional monarchy for the Shia majority.

The reason for this is quite clear and can be summarized in three simple points.

1. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet and is expanding military ties with Washington and the Israeli regime. This makes it a key U.S. ally despite its brutal crackdown on dissent and the lack of any democracy at all, which Washington claims to be the flagbearer of.

2. Most of the population are Shia, and together with the Sunni Bahrainis, oppose U.S. hegemony in the region and ties to the Israeli regime. If the ruling tribe is overthrown, equations in West Asia will change.

3. Natural resources and other economic activities from foreign investments will no longer benefit the West should the Al Khalifa tribe step down.

These three points are a small fraction of how the U.S., as always, displays double standards by crying crocodile tears over alleged human rights abuses against its adversaries while supporting human rights abuses where they are actually taking place among its allies.