The Lebanese authorities announced that they prevented Bahraini dissidents from organizing two activities in Beirut because holding them in the Lebanese capital would offend the Bahraini authorities and the Gulf states.
The Lebanese Minister of Interior, Bassam Mawlawi, said in a statement yesterday, Thursday, that he had ordered to prevent the holding of these two activities because “if they happen, they would be exposed to offending the Bahraini official authorities and the Arab Gulf countries, and thus hinder the official efforts made by the Lebanese state to promote relations with the Gulf states.
He added that the ban is part of what the Lebanese government has committed to “taking all measures that prevent verbal or actual exposure to the brotherly Arab countries,” as he put it.
Beirut is trying to revive diplomatic relations with several Gulf countries that cut ties with Lebanon following statements made by a Lebanese minister regarding the war in Yemen, which angered those countries.
In his statement, the Minister of the Interior did not specify the identity of the parties that called for these two activities or the events that would take place in them, only saying that the first was “under the title of the political right in the Bahrain revolution and the second titled Bahrain is injustice and darkness,” and that they were to be held on February 11 and 14 in a hotel in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah stronghold.
In his statement, Mawlawi said that, following consulting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati, he ordered the security forces to “immediately inform the hotel management of their non-residence because they did not obtain legal permissions, and also ordered that all necessary investigative measures be taken to collect information on the organizers, invitees and invitees.”
In early December, members of the Bahraini Al-Wefaq Society, the opposition close to Hezbollah, held a press conference in Beirut, during which they denounced human rights violations in Bahrain, an event that angered Manama. Following this press conference, Molloy decided to deport these opponents.
Al-Wefaq Society is the most prominent opposition group in Bahrain, and it formed the largest bloc in Parliament until 2011, before the authorities worked on dissolving it with the National Democratic Action Society “Wa’ad”, on the accusation of linking these two societies to “terrorism”.
