The Government of Bahrain held a ceremony on 9 May to mark the “completion of the implementation of the 26 recommendations” put forth by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) in 2011. Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) is concerned that this celebration represents a disingenuous attempt to obfuscate grave ongoing violations of human rights in the country.

Yesterday’s announcement by the Bahraini government is in stark contrast to the determinations made by independent NGOs and international governing bodies. Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report in 2015 confirming that the Bahrain security forces continue to torture detainees during interrogation. The report concluded “institutions set up after 2011” lack the “independence and transparency” as security forces continue the same abuses documented by the BICI 2011 report.

Bearing in mind the government’s announcement, ADHRB would like to highlight our 2015 report, issued together with the Bahrain Institute for Rights & Democracy (BIRD), and the Bahrain Center for Human rights (BCHR), which provided recommendation-by-recommendation analysis of the Government of Bahrain’s implementation of the BICI. In this analysis, we found that the government of Bahrain has only fully implemented two of the 26 recommendations. Further, another 16 remain partially implemented and the government has failed to make progress on the remaining eight.