(AhlulBayt News Agency) - “We have been doing our best to try and lobby [at] these different organizations and speak to them, and try to get them moving, or to actually make statements about what is going on. Until now, we have not seen much from them,” London-based Maryam al-Khawaja with the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) told Press TV in an interview on Thursday.
“We saw recently Hillary Clinton (visiting Bahrain) give a speech, and she didn't really say much to condemn what is happening. She talked about democracy, but she didn't outright condemn these atrocities, or human rights violations that are happening,” al-Khawaja added.
The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) estimates there are up to 500 people in prison over the recent political unrest.
According to the latest BCHR figure, nearly a fifth of the detainees are children and young teenagers.
“We have found that a lot of these arrests took place at a time when these children were supposed to start taking their exams,” al-Khawaja said.
There have also been reports of confessions extracted under torture.
Al-Khawaja mentioned the case of two detainees with murder charges, who, after three months under physical and psychological torture, made forced confessions.
It would take another three months and the testimony of the person who was attacked -- who said the two were definitely not the perpetrators and that the attack was not a murder attempt -- to prove the pairs' innocence.
Bahrain has a predominately Shia population, but is ruled by a constitutional Sunni monarchy.
October's parliamentary elections were marred by a crackdown on protests called by opposition leaders.
The Shia community says discrimination against it is rife and the parliament has lost its power after an upper house was appointed.
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