AWALI, Bahrain (AP) — Pope Francis suggested Thursday that Bahrain’s government renounce the death penalty and guarantee the fundamental human rights of all citizens upon arrival in the Sunni-ruled kingdom, accused through human rights teams of systematically discriminating against opponents of the Shiite majority.
With King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at his side, Francis, the first pope to set foot in Bahrain, also suggested the Persian Gulf country ensure “safe and dignified” operating conditions for its migrant workers, who have long been victims of abuse and exploitation in structural sectors. of the island’s oil extraction and domestic services.
Though a diplomat, Francis did not hesitate to address some of the contentious social issues in Bahrain at the start of his four-day trip to attend a government-sponsored interfaith convention on East-West discussion and to deal with the country’s small Catholic community. .
Francis, 85, who has been using a wheelchair for several months because of stress on knee ligaments, said he was in “a lot” of pain as he flew into the Gulf. For the first time, he greeted the hounds traveling with him sitting than walking. down the aisle of the plane.
Human rights teams and relatives of Shiite activists sentenced to death suggested Francis use his stopover in Bahrain to call for an end to capital punishment and protect political dissidents, many of whom have been detained since Bahrain violently suppressed 2011 Arab Spring protests with those of Saudi Arabia and neighboring United Arab Emirates.
In the years that followed, Bahrain jailed Shiite activists, expelled others, stripped many of their nationalities, banned the largest Shiite opposition group, and shut down its main independent newspaper.
The Bahraini government maintains that it respects human rights and freedom of expression. Before the trip, the government told The Associated Press it had a “zero-tolerance policy toward discrimination, persecution or promotion of the department on ethnic, cultural or religious grounds. “
Francis indirectly referred to sectarian strife when he arrived in the desert city of Awali and met with al Khalifa at the Royal Palace in Sakhir, the first papal stop in Bahrain.
Addressing government officials and diplomats from the palace’s gleaming courtyard, Francis praised Bahrain’s culture of tolerance and cited Bahrain’s constitution, which prohibits discrimination on religious grounds, as a stated commitment to be put into practice.
This, he said, would ensure “that equal dignity and equal opportunities are identified concretely for the organization and for the individual; that there is no form of discrimination and that basic human rights are not violated, but that it is promoted. “
Referring to the death penalty, Francis said the government must above all guarantee the right to life, and “wants to guarantee this right, adding to those who are punished, those who must not have their lives taken away. “
According to Bahrain’s Institute for Rights and Democracy, Bahrain ended a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in 2017 and has since held six prisoners.
The organization and Human Rights Watch have documented a “dramatic increase” in the number of death sentences handed down since 2011, with another 26 people on death row lately, some of them for political activities.
The teams said some had been convicted after “grossly unfair trials based solely or basically on confessions allegedly received under duress through torture and ill-treatment. “
The human rights organization Array Bahrain published a letter from the relatives of some of those sentenced to death in which Francis is asked to lift the point and the Jau prison, where many political prisoners are held.
“Members of our family circle remain in detention and are under threat of execution despite the manifest injustice of their beliefs,” the letter said.
Francis replaced the training of the Catholic Church to claim the inadmissibility of the death penalty in all cases. He has visited detainees during his trips abroad, but such criminal visits are not planned in Bahrain.
Francis has also called for living wages and operating situations for staff around the world, and repeated this call upon his arrival in Bahrain.
Francis recalled that Bahrain had one of the highest rates of immigration in the world, with a part of the population made up of foreign painters, but that many paintings were “dehumanizing”.
“Let’s make sure the race situations are safe and dignified,” Francis said. He suggested that Bahrain be a “beacon in the region to sell equivalent rights and achieve better situations for workers, women and youth, while respecting and fearing all those who feel most marginalized from society, such as immigrants and prisoners.
Bahrain, like other Gulf Arab states, relies on staff from Asian countries like India and Pakistan who may face difficult situations for low wages.
While Bahrain and others have carried out labour reforms after facing foreign pressure, some employees continue to be mistreated through their employers or denied the wages they are owed.
Al Khalifa, for his part, praised Francis’ efforts to promote interfaith fraternity and said Bahrain committed to a similar purpose of a world “where tolerance prevails while striving for peace and rejecting everything that divides its unity. “
Francis is expected to speak directly to migrant staff when he meets with the country’s Catholic community, which numbers about 80,000 more people in a country of about 1. 5 million people. Most are employees from the Philippines and India, though tour organizers expected pilgrims from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries to attend Francis’ main Mass at the National Stadium on Saturday.
Bahrain is home to the oldest Catholic church in the Gulf, the Parish of the Sacred Heart, which opened in 1939, as the largest, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia. With a capacity of 2,300 seats, the cathedral opened last year in Awali on land donated to the church through the king.
Francis will stop at any of the churches he made his stop at and will most likely thank the king for the government’s longstanding tolerance of Christians, especially compared to neighboring Saudi Arabia, where Christians cannot practice their faith blatantly.
“Religious freedom in Bahrain is the most productive in the Arab world,” said Archbishop Paul Hinder, apostolic administrator for Bahrain and other Gulf countries. “Even if not everything is ideal, there will possibly be conversions [to Christianity], which are not at least officially punished as in other countries. “
A Catholic archbishop recently said that the Church is called to serve the religion that does justice more holistically.
PALO, Leyte—A Marian symbol that encouraged hope in survivors of Super Typhoon Yolanda (international codename Haiyan) won the episcopal coronation on the ninth anniversary of the fatal storm.
SUKKUR, Pakistan—On the sandy banks of the Indus River, which flows up and down through Pakistan and its southern province of Sindh, Hindus were waiting for brightly colored boats to send to a peaceful island that has been home to a temple for only about two hundred years.
Catholic bishops in the Davao region of the southern Philippines have joined a bill that would claim the eastern province of Davao a mining-free zone.