Hillary Clinton urged to press for release of detained netizens during visit

Reporters Without Borders wrote to U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton ahead of her upcoming visit to Bahrain voicing deep concern about the situation of freedom of expression and human rights in the Gulf state. The trial of 25 human rights activists and opposition supporters who were arrested in August and September began on 28 October. Two follow-up hearings have since been held, on 11 and 25 November. The defendants include Adeljalil Al-Singace, a blogger and academic who heads the civil liberties and pro-democracy movement Al Haq, and Ali Abdulemam, a blogger regarded as one of Bahrain’s Internet pioneers, who is an active member of the Bahrainonline.org forum. All of the defendants, who pleaded not guilty to the 10 charges brought against them, have complained of being the victims of violence and mistreatment while detained. The letter urged Clinton to do everything possible to have such practices stopped and to support the cause of the country’s human rights defenders in her conversations with the Bahraini authorities. Reporters Without Borders, which is especially concerned about the right to a fair trial and respect for defence rights, called on Clinton to press for the release of the detained cyber-dissidents, and to raise the cases of Abdeljalil Al-Singace and Ali Abdulemam in particular. Bahrain was ranked 144th out of 178 countries in the 2010 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, a fall of 25 places from its ranking last year. The fall was due above all to serious cases of imprisonment and prosecution, especially those involving bloggers and other netizens, and to the government’s repressive attitudes. Access to thousands of websites is currently blocked in Bahrain. Culture minister Sheikha Mai Bent Mohammed Al-Khalifa, a member of the royal family, launched a campaign against online porn in early 2009 that led to the closure of 1,040 websites. A radical content filtering policy is applied to the Internet that affects all content of a political or religious nature regarded as obscene or damaging to the royal family’s dignity. Opposition leader AbdulWahab Hossein recently found that his Facebook page had been blocked as a result of this censorship. During her historic address last January, Clinton very clearly affirmed U.S. support for freedom of expression and opinion on the Internet, saying the United States had a “duty” to defend “this tool of economic and social development.” Reporters Without Borders hopes she will now defend these principles with the authorities in Bahrain.