Bahrain News Agency’s New Scandal

The "Awayieh" electronic website revealed that the Bahrain News Agency has provided the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights distorted reports on the situation in the Kingdom.

The site noted that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman Rupert Colville clarified this fact during a meeting last Friday with the Minister of Bahrain for Social Development and Acting Minister of Health, Fatima Bint Mohammed Al Balushi and three other Bahraini government officials.

Showing that there is a flagrant distortion in the official News Agency report,
Colville pointed out that "this distortion has been handed among a number of local newspapers in Bahrain and even by some government officials as well as the confidential media to be used for own purposes."

Colville falsified what Bahrain News Agency has quoted him especially that it wasn't present at the mentioned meeting. The agency has claimed that "the High Commission has recognized that deception on the Kingdom of Bahrain," and quoted it as saying: "Some of the information that we received on the latest developments in Bahrain is incorrect."

Colville said, "I assure that it (the Commission) has not made any statement like that", and is disturbed by this blatant distortion of its words," noting that it "will formally ask the government officials who attended the meeting to issue a correction."

The discussions focused, in the meeting with the delegation of the Bahraini government, on a number of issues related to the last demonstrations of demands including the need to conduct independent transparent investigations concerning human rights violations that took place there.