•  washington
• Wednesday, May 16, 2012
• Inter Press Service

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is sending the wrong signal to the government of Bahrain in proceeding with a partial sale of new arms to Manama, according to human rights activists and some lawmakers here.

Their reaction followed Friday's announcement by the State Department that it had cleared a number of items for transfer out of a 53- million-dollar arms package that the administration originally announced last September but subsequently held up due to opposition from key members of Congress.

In announcing what it called the 'renewal of U.S. security cooperation with Bahrain', the State Department stressed that none of the weapons approved for transfer could be used in the kingdom's ongoing efforts to suppress growing unrest on the island, especially among its majority Shi'a community.

Demonstrations have been taking place on an almost nightly basis in Shi'a villages in recent weeks and have increased in violence, with some youths throwing Molotov cocktails at police, and with police firing tear gas and birdshot to disperse the protests, with sometimes fatal results.

'Given the continued deterioration in the human rights situation there, we think it's a bad call to be releasing arms - any sort of arms - to Bahrain at this time,' Joe Stork, a veteran Middle East specialist at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS.

'We're very concerned with the signal that this sends both to the Bahraini government and the Bahraini people,' said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). 'And we're very disappointed that this announcement was not accompanied by an announcement of any real progress on reform issues, including the numerous recommendations made by the Bassiouni Commission that have yet to be implemented,' he said.

He was referring to the Bahraini Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) that was chaired by the noted Egyptian- American jurist, Cherif Bassiouni and which last November issued a nearly 500-page report on serious human rights abuses committed by government forces during its Saudi- backed crackdown against the pro-democracy movement last winter and spring.

Among its most important recommendations, it called for the immediate release of hundreds of people imprisoned for exercising their right to free speech or peaceful assembly and for the investigation and prosecution of officials at all levels responsible for serious abuses, including torture and unlawful killings.

While officials who briefed journalists here declined to specify what arms will be transferred or their value, they insisted that they could be used only for Bahrain's external defence, presumably against Iran.

According to foreignpolicy.com's well-connected 'Cable' blog, they will likely include six harbour patrol boats, communications equipment for Bahrain's U.S.-designed air- defence system, ground- based radars, air-to-air-missile systems, Seahawk helicopters, air- defence systems, parts for F-16 fighter engines and Cobra helicopters, and night- vision equipment.

'The items that we are releasing are not used for crowd control,' State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said in a statement that noted that Washington remained 'mindful of the fact that there a number of serious unresolved human rights issues that the Government of Bahrain needs to address.' She noted, in particular, that TOW missiles and Humvees that were part of the original package would not be transferred.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service