Bahrain

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, this month marks the 14th year since thousands of Bahraini citizens took to the streets to peacefully protest the oppressive practices of the Bahraini Government. These citizens--to include human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists--were brutally repressed by their own leaders. Since then, I have stood in solidarity with the Bahraini people demanding accountability, and I will continue to do so until we see real change.

Unfortunately, all these years later, the Bahraini Government has failed to implement basic changes to guarantee the fundamental rights that every government owes its citizens. The Government of Bahrain continues to impose restrictions on expression, assembly, and association.

Bahraini elections are neither free nor fair, and authorities systematically exclude and repress opposition voices. In 2023, the government arrested four men for simply suggesting on social media that Bahrain should improve its legislative system.

The State Department's most recent human rights report judged that there was no improvement in the human rights situation in Bahrain. No improvement? Nearly 15 years to address these fundamental flaws and the Bahraini Government still has nothing to show for it!

I called on the Government of Bahrain to release its political prisoners, and while I was heartened to hear that the Bahraini Government granted amnesty to 2,500 prisoners last year, they should not have been detained in the first place. Many of these prisoners were unjustly detained, and thousands remain in prison under inhumane conditions and without fair trial.

Hundreds of political prisoners remain detained in the now-infamous Jau Prison in Bahrain, where two people died last year because of medical neglect. The U.N. has raised troubling concerns that detainees at this facility have been denied required medical care and do not have regular access to adequate food and safe drinking water. Some allegations have suggested that authorities have intentionally exposed prisoners to extreme heat in these facilities, at times reaching 122 degrees Fahrenheit. These conditions are unacceptable, particularly when many of these prisoners have been denied fair trials and due process.

My goal today is not to insult or undermine a U.S. ally. It is precisely because of our strong ties that I feel compelled to speak out and demand better. It is my greatest hope that someday I will be able to stop issuing these statements into the record every February because the Bahraini regime has stopped repressing its citizens and has instead entered into a real and inclusive dialogue with them.

In short, I am not asking for lip service; I am asking for real change. I renew my call on Bahrain's monarchy to halt its deliberate campaign of silencing peaceful opposition, to stop the indefensible revocation of citizenships, and to release political prisoners like Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and Abduljalil al-Singace.

And I call on the Trump administration and, in particular, Secretary Rubio--who has previously been a staunch advocate in the U.S. Senate for advancing human rights in Bahrain--to take this issue seriously and demand more accountability from Bahrain at the highest levels.

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