The UN was wrong to honour a dictator and mass murderer
The people of Bahrain have been enraged by the decision by a UN committee to grant Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s despotic prime minister for the past 36 years, the prize of “human settlements”.
This step ran against the true feelings of most Bahrainis who have been at war with this man and his clique since 1975. Together with the British colonial officer, Ian Henderson, he has repeatedly been accused of overseeing policies of systematic torture that resulted in the death in custody of many people, and the maiming of others. Sheikh Khalifa is a living example of absolute dictatorship and cruelty, bound by nothing in his ruthlessness with his opponents. Between 1975 and 2001 he imposed draconian laws that turned the country into hell, with thousands of citizens imprisoned, tortured maimed or killed. Hundreds more were forced to live in exile. He ruled with an iron fist, aided by his British aides and the notorious State Security Law and State Security Court. The black era continued unabated despite the cries of the victims and their families as the ruling family continued its policies of repression,, extortion of people’s wealth, expropriation of vast areas of the land and sea.
Furthermore, Sheikh Khalifa himself became one of most greedy rulers in the world. In addition to expropriating the oil revenues he put his hands on vast reclaimed sea lands, with all costs of reclamation paid for from public money. Most government contracts were given either to companies that he owned directly or through partners. He would impose payments on any company, internal or external, as a condition for gaining the contracts. He is known among the people as “Mr 50 percent” in reference to his corrupt business dealings. When he owned brick factories he ordered that pavements be covered with the bricks of his own factories. He sits on financial and business empires that are paralleled by no other ruler in the region. Sheikh Khalifa ran the country as his own private enterprise, tolerating no dissenting voices or business competition from anyone.
The UN step, which is believed to have come not through real conviction of his honesty and management skills, but through corruption that seeps through the echelons of power within the international organisation. Over the past decade corruption has spread to UN agencies as repressive rulers sought to get certificates of good behaviour from these agencies. For example, the oil-for-food programme in Iraq was derailed as corrupt officials made fortunes either in business deals or through bribes from Saddam’s regime. The US Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is now trying to assess the extent of corruption involved in the British arms deals with Saudi Arabia. BAe Systems, the main corporation involved in the Al Yamamah deal has been asked by the US MoJ to cooperate in exposing bank accounts used to facilitate payments of bribes to senior Saudi officials, such as Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi Ambassador in Washington.
On its part, the government of Bahrain led by Sheikh Khalifa was exposed in 1998 to have paid a small organisation run by one of the experts with the UN Human Rights Commission $120,000 in return for not voting against Bahrain in relation to charges of arbitrary detention. It is now known that officials of several media and human rights organisations have been on the pay list of the Al Khalifa ruling family of Bahrain. Among them are reputable organisations in UK. In the absence of effective watchdogs corruption is becoming endemic in these organisations.
Those organisations which are engaged in human rights work have avoided sanctioning Bahrain for ill-treatment of prisoners, and refused to issue statements against the indiscriminate attacks on freedom. Despite the efforts by Bahrainis human rights activists these organisations have remained silent on issues such as cultural genocide, arbitrary detention, torture, women and children. These organisations are not corrupt in themselves, but some of their officials have been bribed by government of Bahrain. Also, officials of some media bodies have been “neutralised” and no matter what crimes are committed by the rulers of Bahrain they will not be reported, despite the abundance of information on these crimes.
It is within these contexts that the people of Bahrain have ridiculed the UN committee on human development for honouring a torturer, a thief and a criminal by the UN standards. It is a betrayal of those whose lives were abruptly and viciously ended by Sheikh Khalifa and his torture team, and thus a betrayal of the values and principles that are supposedly upheld by those organisations.
In a country where tens of thousands of the youth had served, at one time or another, a period of arbitrary detention and possibly torture, how can the main person in charge of security be honoured in such audacious manner? What would the world community do if Saddam Hussain was honoured in this way? The people of Bahrain rank Khalifa bin Salman in the same position as Saddam and are thus shocked to hear this initiative that could only have been made by corrupt officials who received bribes from this corrupt regime.
We call on the United Nations to undertake an investigation into this in order to protect its reputation and long-standing in the field of human rights and the upholding of the rule of law in the world. The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, is personally requested to call for an immediate investigation into this fiasco that has compromised the UN standing, especially that the Bahraini activists and the victims of the Al Khalifa will not rest until they see justice done to them. Sheikh Khalifa should have been arrested and tried for crimes against humanity.
The scars of his torture victims are still clearly visible, as well as the graves of those killed outside the judicial process. Arbitrary detention, torture and other forms of human degradation are still in force and the jails of Bahrain continue to receive pro-democracy activists en-masse. It is time that corruption within the international organisations be addressed and uprooted, to stop dictators, torturers and mass murderers being honoured in the way Khalifa bin Salman has been. Instead of honouring them, they should be tried for their crimes against innocent civilian population.
Bahrain Freedom Movement
28/06/2007