Images of Press Conference on Bahrain’s Revolution in House of Lords, Tuesday 5th July 2011

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - In his opening remarks Lord Avebury said: We are concerned by events in Bahrain where the situation is worse than what we had in the nineties. At that time there were no soldiers shooting people, no show trials as there are now. Although the King is trying to show a different reality, the situation has gone beyond the point of no return. He added: “If you want conversation you don’t start by beating the people up. I don’t believe current initiatives to have talks as a starter. Before talks began there were protests against these talks”. Two days ago, I had letter from the Foreign ٍٍSecretary. It was disappointing to see ministers talking about reinvigorating dialogue after the regime had inflicted torture on people while depriving them of their lively needs, sacking professional doctors, engineers and nurses. A prominent human rights lawyer has been taken into custody and is being held behind bars for defending other prisoners. In these circumstances talking about the crown prince as intermediary is none sense.

Then Nabeel Rajab, the President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights spoke, via Skype, about the deteriorating human rights situation in Bahrain. He started saying: I hope to be able to speak without being disconnected by the government as they have always done. He said Bahrain witnessed crimes against humanity. These include systematic torture, people fired from work, students dismissed from universities, doctors, nurses, bloggers and athletes. The government practiced sectarian cleansing against Shia by targeting them in their work place and places of worship. Mosques were destroyed and houses raided. The government does not depend on its own people for security but on people from Syria, Yemen and Pakistan. In the past few weeks more mercenaries came from Pakistan. We have thousands of people who have been targeted either by sacking or arrest.