The Bahrain Forum for Human Rights: US blocking of the LuaLua TV website and more than 30 media websites is a flagrant violation of the freedom of the press

The Bahrain Forum for Human Rights (BFHR) said that the recent action of the US Department of Justice of confiscating 33 media websites from members of the Islamic Radio and Television Union, including the Bahraini LuaLua Satellite Channel, is a flagrant, dangerous, and grave infringement on the freedom of the press and the right to circulate information.

The BFHR said that these measures will help expand the environment that is hostile towards honest and independent media, especially in countries that relentlessly suppress freedom of the press, as is the case in Bahrain. the BFHR called on international human rights organizations to condemn these measures, which constitute a serious threat to freedom of expression.

The BFHR explained that the USA ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1992, making it binding on the US. The treaty protects freedom of expression (Article 19) and includes freedom of expression that is featured in the United States constitutional law. It also protects freedom of association (Article 22) and the right to privacy (Article 17). Freedom of expression in the ICCPR also includes “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers.”

The BFHR added that it is of particular importance that the Human Rights Committee warned in General Comment No. 34 of the dangers of government overreach in the name of national security, noting that states parties must ensure that national security provisions are not used as an excuse “to suppress or withhold from the public information of legitimate public interest that does not harm national security or to prosecute journalists, researchers, environmental activists, human rights defenders, or others, for having disseminated such information.”

Bahrain Forum for Human Rights
June 24, 2021

1. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Adopted on December 16, 1966. G.A. res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force March 23, 1976. Ratified by the United States on June 8, 1992. Article 19.
2. UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), General comment no. 34, Article 19, Freedoms of opinion and expression, UN Doc. CCPR/C/GC/34 (2011), paragraphs 22 and 30.