Lebanon to deport outlawed Bahrain opposition party members

15 December 2021, 9:22 pm

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In this Jan. 3, 2015 file photo, a masked Bahraini anti-government protester holds a picture of jailed Shiite cleric Sheik Ali Salman, the head of the opposition al-Wefaq political association, as riot police fire tear gas canisters during clashes in Bilad Al Qadeem, Bahrain. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)

Lebanon’s interior minister orders the deportation of members of Bahrain’s outlawed Shi’ite opposition party after they criticized from Beirut their country’s human rights record.

The deportation order is likely another attempt to ease an unprecedented diplomatic rift between Lebanon and several Gulf Arab nations, including Bahrain, a Sunni monarchy with a majority Shi’ite population. Earlier this month, Lebanon’s information minister, who is at the heart of the weeks-long crisis, resigned in a bid to ease the rift.

Bahrain in 2016 suspended Al-Wefaq, the island nation’s largest opposition political party, as part of its crackdown on dissent that erupted following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in the region. The party, many of its members now living in exile, last week held a press conference in Beirut to launch its annual human rights report.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many Al-Wefaq members will be impacted by the decision.

During the conference, organized at a Beirut hotel, Al-Wefaq said it has documented more than 20,000 detainees in Bahrain since 2011, including hundreds of unlawful detentions and enforced disappearances in just 2019 and 2020.

Bahrain in response called on Lebanon to bar such events, saying they “are not harmonious with brotherly relations.”