Today PHR’s Richard Sollom testified on Capitol Hill before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in order to highlight the Bahraini government’s recent violations of human rights amid pro-democracy protests in the island Arab kingdom. Representatives from Human Rights Watch and the Bahrain Center for Human Rights also testified about human rights violations in Bahrian. Sollom’s testimony focused on PHR’s most recent report, Do No Harm: A Call for Bahrain to End Systematic Attacks on Doctors and Patients, which provides forensic evidence of systematic and calculated attacks on physicians, medical staff, patients and unarmed civilians. Amid reports of extrajudicial killings, torture, beatings, arbitrary arrest and detentions, PHR pushed the US Government to speak out publicly on these egregious violations and to push for the immediate release of all medical personnel arrested in the crackdown. In addition to congressional testimony, PHR joined six partner organizations in a May 12 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that encouraged the United States Administration to take the lead in convening special sessions on Bahrain and Yemen at the United Nations Human Rights Council in order to establish official channels for both human rights investigations and the accountability of their abuses.
