{"id":12525,"date":"2012-09-12T08:54:25","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T15:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=12525"},"modified":"2012-09-12T08:54:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-12T15:54:25","slug":"stepping-up-ngos-ask-clinton-to-suspend-all-us-military-aid-to-bahrain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=12525","title":{"rendered":"Stepping-up – NGOs ask Clinton to suspend all US military aid to Bahrain"},"content":{"rendered":"

NGOs ask Clinton to suspend all US military aid to Bahrain<\/strong>
\n12 September, 2012 – Reporters Without Borders<\/p>\n

Human rights organizations wrote to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on 10 September asking her to suspend all US military aid to the government of Bahrain because of its human rights violations.<\/p>\n

Read the letter :<\/strong><\/p>\n

Honorable Hillary R. Clinton
\nSecretary of State
\n2201 C Street, NW
\nWashington, DC 20520<\/p>\n

September 10, 2012<\/p>\n

Dear Secretary Clinton,<\/p>\n

We are writing to alert you to credible reports that the security forces of the Government of Bahrain continue to engage in human rights violations against non-violent, pro-democracy protesters and to urge you to immediately suspend further U.S. military assistance and arms transfers to the responsible units, as required by law.<\/p>\n

The United States Government has appropriated at least $299 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and \u201cSection 1206\u201d assistance to Bahrain since 2002, with $10 million in FMF in the pipeline for FY 2012 and $10 million requested for FY 2013.<\/p>\n

As you know, Section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act (the \u201cLeahy Law\u201d) states that: \u201cNo assistance shall be furnished under this Act or the Arms Export Control Act to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.\u201d We believe that the reports cited below constitute \u201ccredible information\u201d and that attacks by the police and other security forces on unarmed, non-violent, pro-democracy activists rise to the level of \u201cgross human rights violations,\u201d particularly so when the attacks resulted in death.<\/p>\n

We provide the following information to assist you in carrying out the purposes of the law\u2014namely, to avoid U.S. complicity with human rights violations and to create an incentive for the foreign government involved to bring human rights violators to justice.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In November 2011, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) identified 35 people (including at least 19 protestors) killed by Bahraini security forces during the February-March 2011 demonstrations for political liberalization. BICI clearly attributed three of the deaths to the Bahrain Defense Force (BDF) [1] and found BDF, Ministry of Interior and the National Security Agency among those responsible for detaining and torturing protestors, including at BDF\u2019s Al Qurain site. [2] While the BICI was able in some cases to document specific units that were involved in multiple incidents, it did not name the units responsible.- [3] We assume, however, that the USG has sought access to this information, [4] and that these units have been notified that they are ineligible to receive further U.S. security assistance until Bahrain takes \u201ceffective steps to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice,\u201d as required by Foreign Assistance Act Section 620M(b). We note that full application of this domestic law reinforces the U.S. government\u2019s call for Bahrain to implement fully the BICI Report\u2019s recommendation that investigations and prosecutions for torture and other serious crimes (such as unlawful killings) extend to higher ranks of the security forces. ….more<\/a><\/p>\n

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NGOs ask Clinton to suspend all US military aid to Bahrain 12 September, 2012 – Reporters Without Borders Human rights organizations wrote to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on 10 September asking her to suspend all US military aid to the government of Bahrain because of its human rights violations. Read the letter : more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3487],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12526,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12525\/revisions\/12526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}