MANAMA, 4 November 2006 — Bahrain’s Information Ministry has shut down an opposition website days after censoring several Internet sites which discussed an alleged government plot to change the country’s demography.
The Information Ministry blocked the website of the leftist National Democratic Action Association (NDAA) starting on Thursday, the group’s secretary-general, Ibrahim Sherif, said.
“We did not receive any notification from the ministry about the reason our website was blocked ... We did not post anything on the website justifying its closure,” he said.
Sherif said his group’s website had not carried any material related to the report by a purported British spy who claimed to have uncovered the plot.
Authorities earlier this week censored 17 Internet sites and blogs that debated the report, but the Information Ministry lifted the censorship of one of the blogs after its owner agreed to drop material related to the controversial report by Salah Al-Bandar, who was expelled from Bahrain in September.
Bandar said he had uncovered a secret organization operating within the government to “deprive an essential part of the population of this country of their rights”.
The Information Ministry said it had blocked the websites, mostly Bahraini, because they flouted a court ruling banning publication of any comments on the matter. Bahraini newspaper editors have demanded a reversal of the ruling.
The clampdown on Internet sites comes in the run-up to parliamentary and municipal elections scheduled for Nov. 25.
Bahrain, which was shaken by a wave of opposition unrest in the 1990s, revived its elected parliament in 2002, although the opposition continues to object to dividing legislative power equally between the elected chamber and an appointed consultative council.
