FUNDING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN BAHRAIN

Early day motion 1266, tabled 15 May 2018 by Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru). Signed by 21 members.

That this House notes with dismay that human rights abuses are commonplace in Bahrain; further notes that 14 civilians were placed on death row in 2017; condemns that forced confessions through torture are often accepted as evidence when sentencing civilians; deplores that several Bahraini human rights defenders and their families have been wrongly sentenced and imprisoned; notes that the Government is providing £5 million of technical assistance to the Bahraini regime and a further £1.5 million is to be spent in the financial year 2017-18; notes that this funding has been spent on supposedly bipartisan institutions that are responsible for handling allegations of torture, but to which the UN Committee Against Torture has referred to as not independent and not effective; believes that the refusal of the Cabinet Office to disclose any information about the Foreign and Commonwealth's Integrated Activity Fund in a recent freedom of information request is an unprecedented development in the history of technical assistance which signifies that the Bahraini funding programme is now less transparent than ever before; and calls on the Government to publish details of the Integrated Activity Fund as a matter of urgency and to categorically confirm that the Integrated Activity Fund is not being used to undermine human rights in Bahrain.

Signatures by party: Scottish National Party 8, Labour 4, Plaid Cymru 4, Independent 2, DUP 1, Green 1, Labour/Co-operative 1.