Chapter I -- Introduction
as to different questions of alleged violations of international human rights law and Bahrain law.
11. A large volume of information was received from individuals, groups of individuals acting through non-governmental organisations (NGOs), human rights organisations and religious organisations. A number of complainants were included in more than one source. For example, an individual complainant could send a complaint via the Commission`s website, make a telephone call and/or come to the Commission`s offices for an interview, and the same complaint could also appear in group submissions by political parties, such as Al Wefaq National Islamic Society (Al Wefaq), the Gathering of National Unity, Karama and the National Democratic Action Society (Wa`ad), and NGOs, such as the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) and Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society. Al Wefaq in particular was in almost daily contact with the Commission. The groupings of complaints that Al Wefaq and the BCHR sent to the Commission, and for which the Commission is grateful, frequently contained similar and overlapping information about complainants and events. In many of these communications, the cover letter or memorandum stated that the subject of the communication was to report a certain number of complaints whose range was between 50 and 500, but which seldom contained individual files of complainants. The primary benefit of this information was to identify persons on behalf of whom the respective organisations filed claims.[1]
12. The Commission`s analysis of all sources of information in respect of allegations of violations of international human rights is contained in the various Chapters and Sections of this Report.[2]
13. The Commission`s methodology comprised the following activities: interviewing individual complainants; meeting with GoB officials, civil society organisations, opposition groups, professionals of different categories and religious leaders; and conducting on-site visits to prisons, hospitals, demolished places of worship and other locations.
- ↑ For example, the Commission received 648 complaints of alleged thefts of personal property in the course of arrests. Many of these included the official seizure of what the GoB considers evidentiary material. Additionally, 788 complaints were received about allegations of torture. However, upon more careful examination of the claims, it appeared that what the complainants considered torture varied enormously from the legal definition of torture under the Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CAT). Sometimes allegations included verbal abuse or roughness in the way handcuffs were placed. This is not to make light of these matters as they are still violations of a person`s human dignity, but it is illustrative of the differences in the way people perceive the situation. After the BCHR is reported to have informed those who came to it to report physical mistreatment that in order to be considered torture, the physical mistreatment had to be connected to obtaining an statement or confession, subsequent statements by complainants on the subject became more focused in that direction.
- ↑ There is no numerical correlation between the reports received, as categorised above, and the violations found by the Commission, which are described in this Report. The numbers of reports in the different categories are based solely on what was reported to the Commission, while the Commission`s findings with regard to the various categories of violations are based on those allegations that were, upon analysis, deemed sufficiently reliable.
