Mother Jones reported on Friday:
Since the onset of anti-government protests in Bahrain, the US has refrained from taking substantial steps to pressure the Bahraini government to stop its crackdown on protesters. That changed yesterday during a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, when Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, US ambassador to the UNHRC, included Bahrain on the list of human rights offenders in need of the Council’s attention. Some of the other countries on the list: Iran, Burma, North Korea, and Zimbabwe. Donahoe told the UNHRC that Bahrain “has arbitrarily detained medical workers and others perceived as opponents.” She ended her comments on Bahrain by saying that the country must “follow through on its commitment to ensuring that those responsible for human rights abuses are held accountable.”
Let’s be clear about the sequence here. On Thursday at Netroots, Ali Gharib at Think Progress did a great piece calling out the State Department on its hypocrisy re Bahrain, reporting on Lamees Dhaif’s smashing appearance that morning at Netroots–a Bahraini blogger who is here as a guest of the State Department and who savaged Hillary Clinton for her hypocrisy. Oh, yeah, and I did a post on Dhaif the same day. Gharib and I reported Dhaif’s assertion that the State Department knew all the details of the treatment of writers and doctors but was saying nothing.
And that day the State Department finally said something….
Let’s also be clear that Lamees Dhaif fears for her family. Her sister spent 50 days in prison in Bahrain because of Dhaif’s brave writing. Now it looks like the State Department is signalling: We support this blogger.
Thanks to Steve Horn for making the connection!
Update: An earlier version of this post mistakenly stated that the State Department statement followed Dhaif’s appearance by a day. They were the same day. But Horn notes that the State Department had to know Dhaif was going public. She’s State’s guest.
