Independent UN experts urge Bahrain to ensure prisoners have adequate food, water in scorching heat

DUBAI – Independent experts with the United Nations urged Bahrain on Thursday to ensure those held at its Jaw prison have access to adequate food, water and medical care after they received allegations guards have cut air conditioning in the island kingdom's sweltering summer.

Bahrain called the accusations “false” in a statement sent to The Associated Press and insisted prisoners receive “the same health-care provision as members of the public.” However, the U.N. experts' request comes a year after a mass hunger strike by prisoners at the Jaw Rehabilitation and Reform Center, a facility holding many of the prisoners identified by human rights activists as dissidents who oppose the rule of the island's Al Khalifa family.

The country’s Sunni rulers have long faced complaints of discrimination from the island’s Shiite majority. The experts said they had been getting “worrying accusations” about prisoners' conditions since March.

“Detainees held in some buildings of the prison are often being denied required medical care and do not have regular access to adequate food and safe drinking water," the U.N. experts said. “Particularly worrying are allegations that authorities have cut air conditioning, exposing prisoners to extreme heat, with temperatures arising to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit)".

The experts also said communications between prisoners and their families also had been cut, while prisoners' movements also had been curtailed.

“Lowering standards as a form of punishment when prisoners exercise their legitimate rights to complain is not appropriate,” said the experts, who work with the U.N. voluntarily and independently from any government or organization.

Responding to questions from the AP, Bahrain said it obtained international accreditation for Jaw prison and detainees' “rights and services ... are upheld.”

“The commitment to maintaining a safe and secure environment within all reform and rehabilitation facilities, alongside delivering high standards, continue to be in place and any suggestion otherwise is false,” it said.

Jaw prison is located toward the southern end of Bahrain, an island off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf that’s about the size of New York City with a population of around 1.5 million people. Concerns over medical care at the prison have been raised before by activists.

The 2023 U.S. State Department human rights report on Bahrain noted that activists warned conditions at Jaw could be “harsh and, at times, life threatening due to physical abuse, unjust application of solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure, and inadequate sanitary conditions and medical care.” A tuberculosis outbreak reportedly struck the prison in June 2022, something later also denied by the government.

Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet, is in the midst of a decadelong crackdown on all dissent following the Arab Spring protests, which saw the island’s Shiite majority and others demanding more political freedom.

Since Bahrain put down the protests with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it has imprisoned Shiite activists, deported others, stripped hundreds of their citizenship and closed its leading independent newspaper.

Meanwhile, Bahrain has recognized Israel diplomatically and hosted Pope Francis in November 2022.