French MPs raise alarm over Bahrain's human rights violations

Four French lawmakers raised concerns about worsening human rights crisis in Bahrain earlier this week, urging their government to speak out on the matter, a human rights organisation has said.

Gerard Leseul, Jean-Christophe Lagarde, Isabelle Rauch and Dominique Potier were the MPs that raised the issue with France's Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, the the Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) reported.

Leseul highlighted Manama's "increasingly repressive human rights violations" following the 2011 Arab Spring protests.

The group drew particular attention to the case of the leader of Bahrain's largest political movement between 2006 - 2011, Ali Salman, who is serving a life sentence for allegedly "spying for Qatar". 

The MPs also condemned the state of living conditions in prisons and described them as having "inadequate sanitary facilities, ill-treatment, and acts of torture", Lagarde said. 

Rauch mentioned the arbitrary denial of civil rights of opposition leaders, as well as journalists and trade unionists bringing up the case of human rights defender Abduljalil Al-Singace who was convicted in 2010 for taking part in anti-government protests on charges including "setting up terror groups to topple the regime".

The French government has previously addressed human rights abuses in Bahrain, which may be part of a wider movement in calling out governments that violate international protections for citizens, ADHRB said. 

Bahrain has had worsening reports of rights abuses in the country from a 2021, according to a Human Rights Watch report, which said human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and opposition leaders have been violated.

Every independent Bahraini media group has been banned from operating in the country since 2017 and opposition groups have been dissolved.