MANAMA (Dispatches) – Pope Francis is in Bahrain on his first trip to the Persian Gulf nation, calling for an end to discrimination and human rights violations.
It is vital that “fundamental human rights are not violated but promoted”, the pope said on Thursday at the Sakhir royal palace following his arrival in the Persian Gulf state, where the Shia Muslim opposition and rights groups accuse the monarchy of overseeing human rights abuses.
Religious freedom should be “complete and not limited to freedom of worship”, he said.
The pope was welcomed by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
The visit is Pope Francis’s second to a Persian Gulf Arab country, following his 2019 trip to Abu Dhabi.
Bahrain’s main opposition group, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, says the ruling Al Khalifah regime is exploiting the ongoing visit by Pope Francis in order to cover up its gross human rights violations and repressive measures against democracy advocates.
Al-Wefaq wrote in a statement published on its Twitter page that Bahraini authorities intend to take advantage of the trip in their favor, despite the fact that the situation of human rights, freedom of expression and political tolerance in the country is appalling and critical.
It added that the Manama regime seeks to mask the extent of its oppression and religious discrimination, and this comes as prisons and detention centers across Bahrain are full of scholars, professors, elites and nationalist figures who are subjected to all forms of torture and humiliation.
Pointing to the cruel treatment of Bahraini officials toward the country’s most prominent Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim, al-Wefaq stressed that dozens of scholars, including top opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman, are currently being held behind bars, and hundreds of others are victims of political, religious, cultural, social, economic and security discrimination.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Isa Qassim dismissed the country’s upcoming parliamentary polls, saying the ruling Al Khalifah regime wants to maintain its grip on power and strengthen tyranny in the Persian Gulf kingdom by means of the ballots cast in the elections.
“Elections in Bahrain are only meant to reinforce tyranny, and people play into the hands of the ruling regime and are treated as playthings,” Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim wrote in a post published on his Twitter page.