Two bloggers to go on trial tomorrow along with other detainees

Reporters Without Borders is very worried about bloggers Abdeljalil Al-Singace and Ali Abdulemam, who are among the 25 human rights activists and opposition supporters arrested in August and September whose trial is due to begin tomorrow against an electoral backdrop liable to contribute to the undermining of their defence rights. The press freedom organization calls for the immediate release of the two bloggers and the human rights activists, who are unjustly detained in deplorable conditions, and urges Bahrain’s judicial authorities to behave transparently by ensuring that lawyers, journalists, human rights activists and international observers have access to the court, and by lifting the ban on media coverage of the trial. The authorities must respect the fundamental rights in the international conventions that Bahrain has signed and ratified. An academic and head of the pro-democracy and civil liberties movement Al Haq, Al-Singace was previously arrested in 2009 for allegedly trying to destabilise the government because he used his blog (http://alsingace.katib.org) to denounce the deplorable state of civil liberties and discrimination against Bahrain’s Shiite population. When re-arrested on 4 September, he was reportedly roughed up and received a blow to his head that perforated an eardrum and left him partially deaf. He is now being held in solitary confinement in a National Security detention centre, where he is being treated in a degrading manner and is being denied the use of his wheel-chair. Abdulemam, a very active blogger regarded as one Bahrain’s Internet pioneers, was also arrested on 4 September, in his case after receiving a summons from the National Security department. He is accused of disseminating false information on the pro-democracy forum BahrainOnline.org, a website that gets 100,000 visitors a day although access is blocked within Bahrain. A contributor to the international bloggers network Global Voices, Abdulemam has taken part in many international conferences at which he has denounced human rights violations in Bahrain. He was previously arrested in 2005 for criticising the government on his blog. The authorities have step Internet filtering in recent months and hundreds of sites are currently inaccessible. They include many opposition sites, sites with newsletters such as those of the Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society and the National Democratic Action Society (Al-Wa'ad) and the sites of human rights organizations such as the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI). Bahrain was ranked 144th out of 178 countries in the press freedom index released by Reporters Without Borders on 20 October 2010, falling 25 places in a single year. The fall was due to the increase in arrests of bloggers and netizens and the increase in online censorship. It is listed as a “country under surveillance” in this year’s Reporters Without Borders “Enemies of the Internet” report.