Geneva, Switzerland — 28 September 2015 — On behalf of Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), the European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR), and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), ECDHR advocacy associate Isabel Cerda Marcos delivered an oral intervention on the extraterritorial censorship of activists and human rights defenders in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Cerda Marcos highlighted this trend by referencing the cases of Samar Badawi in Saudi Arabia, Nabeel Rajab in Bahrain, and Ahmed Mansoor in the UAE; all of whom have been put under travel bans or received prison sentences as a result of their activism at previous sessions of the UN Human Rights Council. In particular, the intervention calls on GCC states to respect its own citizens’ right to free speech, and specifically called on European and American states to take action to protect acts of free expressions by foreign human rights defenders within their own borders. An Arabic version of the intervention can be accessed here.
Video of the intervention can be found here.
