The Arab Working Group for Monitoring of Media Coverage of Elections

22 May 2006
Press Release

The Arab Working Group for Monitoring of Media Coverage of Elections (AWG) held a meeting in Copenhagen 16-18 May 2006. The meeting’s aim was to evaluate efforts on monitoring media performance during the last elections in Tunisia, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt.

The meeting also discussed the following issues:

• Suggestion on capacity building of NGOs working in the media monitoring field.
• An Arabic directory release about monitoring of media neutrality during elections.

By William Wallis, Financial Times - May 3 2006

A few blocks away from the new waterfront developments that Bahrain's rulers hope will secure the kingdom's future as a regional banking centre, there are signs of budding revolt.

Wearing balaclavas to mask their identity, young men with no stake in the capital Manama's rising skyline, spend their evenings burning tyres, hurling stones and blocking traffic into the shabby, outlying villages where they live.

The demonstrations are regular and small - barely 50 Shia protesting against discrimination. But they have been preceded by much larger protests and are symptomatic of steadily rising tensions on an island squeezed between the competing influences of Iran and Saudi Arabia, with close ties to Iraq and income disparities that coincide with a deepening sectarian divide.

Released prior to 2006 Elections to the Human Rights Council

AI Index: IOR 41/006/2006
1 May 2006

BAHRAIN

Under a new counter-terrorism law proposed by the government anyone convicted of committing or planning terrorist acts would face the death penalty. Human rights activists and members of Parliament have criticized the proposed law as an attempt to restrict freedoms excessively. In July 2005, Parliament also approved a new law to regulate political associations; human rights and other groups have criticized the new law as overly restrictive and have called on the King to cancel it.