June 17, 2016
The government in Bahrain has suspended all activi-ties by the kingdom’s leading Shia opposition group.
A Justice Ministry statement said the offices of the Wefaq National Islamic Society had also been closed and its assets frozen.
A lawyer for Wefaq, whose leader has been jailed for inciting unrest, said the move had came “out of the blue.”
Wefaq has backed pro-democracy protests in the country since 2011.
That February, demonstrators took to the streets to demand greater political rights and an end to discrimination against the Shia majority by the Sunni ruling family.
The following month, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa brought in troops from neighboring states to restore order and crush dissent. The unrest left at least 30 civilians and five policemen dead.
Opposition activists say dozens more have been killed in four years of clashes between protesters and security forces, while bomb attacks blamed on Iran-backed militants have left a number of police officers dead.
The Justice Ministry statement said the ministry had filed a request with a court to suspend Wefaq to “safeguard the security of the kingdom.”
A lawyer for Wefaq, Abdullah al-Shamlawi, told the Associated Press he had been served court papers Tuesday charging Wefaq had damaged Bahrain’s national security since its inception in 2001 and also included claims that it caused unrest during the 2011 uprising.
Within hours, the court approved the Justice Ministry’s request, he said.
Shamlawi said the court scheduled a hearing for October 6 to decide whether to “liquidate” Wefaq.
Wefaq is Bahrain’s largest legally recognized opposition political society and says it advocates non-violent activism.
Last month, an appeal court more than doubled the prison sentence of Wefaq’s secretary-general from four years to nine, overturning a trial court’s decision to acquit Sheikh Salman of advocating the overthrow of the government by force.
The appeal court increased the sentence despite what Human Rights Watch said was strong evidence that his trial was unfair and the fact that two of the charges on which he was convicted violated his right to freedom of expression.
In a speech Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, said at least 250 Bahrainis had also lost their citizenship in recent years “because of their alleged disloyalty to the interests of the kingdom.”
“Repression will not eliminate people’s grievances, it will increase them,” he said.