Bahrain accused of pre-Grand Prix arrests

Plainclothes police officers have arrested 20 people so far in raids in towns around the Gulf state’s Sakhir circuit, the New York-based watchdog said.

Bahrain has been rounding up pro-democracy activists ahead of its controversial staging of the April 21 Formula One Grand Prix two years after a bloody crackdown, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

“Bahraini authorities are carrying out home raids and arbitrarily detaining opposition protesters in advance of the Formula 1 Grand Prix weekend,” it said.

“These raids and detentions suggest that officials are more concerned with getting activists out of circulation for the Formula 1 race than with addressing the legitimate grievances that have led so many Bahrainis to take to the streets,” said HRW’s Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson.

“The Bahraini authorities have a responsibility to ensure the safety of those attending the Formula 1 Grand Prix, but that should not extend to arresting people for exercising their legitimate rights to free speech and assembly,” Whitson said.

“Night-time raids of targeted people by masked officers who show neither arrest nor search warrants appear intended to intimidate them, their families and their supporters.”

The  Bahraini regime  was rocked by month-long pro-democracy protests in early 2011 that were crushed with the help of Saudi-led troops,according to NDTV.

Last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix was accompanied by a week of angry protests but demonstrators stayed away from the desert circuit and the race passed off without incident.

A total of 80 people have been killed in Bahrain since the protests erupted in February 2011, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

R.S