Bahrain Shiites call on Pope Francis to raise concerns over human rights abuses on trip to Bahrain

Pope Francis is making the first-ever papal trip to Bahrain this week, sparking calls from the country’s majority Shiite opposition and human rights activists for the pontiff to raise human rights concerns in the small island nation.

The island off the coast of Saudi Arabia is ruled by a Sunni monarchy that violently quashed 2011 Arab Spring protests there with the aid of allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In the years since, Bahrain has imprisoned Shiite activists, deported others, stripped hundreds of their citizenship, banned the largest Shiite opposition group and closed down its leading independent newspaper.

"There’s a huge elephant in the room in this situation," said Devin Kenney, Amnesty International’s Bahrain researcher. "The watchwords of this visit are coexistence and dialogue and the Bahraini government suppresses civil and political freedoms, without which coexistence and dialogue cannot be sustained."

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Bahrain maintains it respects human rights and freedom of speech, despite facing repeated criticism by local and international rights activists, as well as U.N. human rights special rapporteurs.

Francis is making the Nov. 3-6 visit to participate in a government-sponsored conference on East-West dialogue and to minister to Bahrain’s tiny Catholic community, part of his effort to pursue dialogue with the Muslim world.

While some Shiite opposition leaders welcome the visit, they hope Francis won’t sidestep the issue of decades of sectarian strife.

"The people of Bahrain live under the influence of sectarian persecution, discrimination, intolerance and systematic governmental repression," said Al-Wefaq, a opposition Shiite party outlawed and dismantled by court order in 2016.

This visit marks Francis’ second trip to a Gulf Arab state and his second to a majority Muslim nation in as many months, evidence that dialogue with the Muslim world has become a major cornerstone of his nearly 10-year papacy. He visited the United Arab Emirates in 2019 and traveled to Kazakhstan for a meeting of religious leaders in September.