Bahrain Mirror: UK Member of Parliament Margaret Farrier said that she, in addition to other MPs, are working on establishing a human rights parliamentary group concerned with human rights affairs in the Gulf. She clarified that she is "just waiting for the confirmation that I can go ahead" and launch its work.

In an exclusive interview with Lualua TV (Saturday November 19, 2016), MP Farrier said that the group is "an all-party parliamentary group on democracy and human rights in the Gulf". She added, "As the name suggests, I reached out to other member of parliament from all parties and so we got together, and it's basically to discuss these issues of human rights abuses and the revocation of citizenship in some of the Gulf countries as well." "We're just at the very beginning but hopefully in the next few weeks we'll have our first meeting and being together some NGOs and some good speakers," she went on to say.

Moreover, the UK MP indicated, "I would really like to make sure that it's not just a talking show, but that we actually do achieve something, and we will have a meeting in the next couple of weeks."

She further said, "Hopefully we can do some sort of difference and put pressure on the UK government and other governments to listen to us and maybe get back to being a bit more democratic and not be afraid of other voices."

Farrier clarified that for people living in the UK, they are lucky, "because as a democracy we can voice our opinion, but in the GCC, we can't voice opinions."

Talking about the citizenship revocation dilemma in the Gulf countries, the UK MP added, "I've seen a lot of citizenship revocation victims in the Gulf and Bahrain, just because they opposed the government and demanded change of power."

"I think in 2014, there were 20 cases of that happened, and now it has increased to more than 208 as of 2015," she added.

In addition, she highlighted that "the EU and the USA have spoken out, but the UK had been really silent on this issue"

"We know that the UK had good relations all across the globe, but especially in the Gulf area, they keep saying that they have good allies, like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as they have strong relationships. If you have a strong relationship, you can then bring the subject about the uncomfortable areas, and human rights in one of them," she stressed.

Arabic Version