A campaigner who says he was tortured in Bahrain has made a complaint to the Conservative Party after MP Bob Stewart told him to “go back to Bahrain” during a confrontation.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, alleges the comments were racial abuse and has also reported the incident to the police.
But the MP for Beckhenham, in London, apologised and denied his comments were racist, saying his intention was to suggest the activist should be campaigning in Bahrain.
Video footage shows Mr Stewart telling Mr Alwadaei that he is “taking money off my country” as he challenged the MP on his ties to the gulf state.
Mr Stewart told him: “Get stuffed. Bahrain is a great place, end of.
“Go away, I hate you. You make a lot of fuss, go back to Bahrain.”
Mr Alwadaei challenged the MP over donations from the Bahraini government, asking “how much did you sell yourself to the Bahraini regime” as the confrontation continued.
Mr Stewart responded: “I didn’t, now you shut up you stupid man.”
“You’re taking money off my country, go away,” he added, with a dismissive wave of his hand.
The exchange happened outside the Foreign Office’s Lancaster House after an event hosted by the Bahraini embassy on Wednesday, Mr Alwadaei said.
In a statement, he said: “I don’t believe I would have been told to ‘go back’ to the country that violently tortured me if it weren’t for the colour of my skin.
“No-one should be subjected to racial abuse, particularly for holding an MP to account for accepting lavish gifts from one of the world’s most repressive regimes.
“Stewart is acting as a mouthpiece by publicly denying its notorious and extensively documented human rights abuses — abuses which have been condemned by the United Nations.”
Mr Stewart is the chair of the all-parliamentary group on Bahrain and has accepted paid-for trips from the gulf state.
He told the PA news agency: “My mistake was to actually be goaded into reaction, and I apologise for that. I also apologise if anybody thinks I was being racist – I was not.
“I meant go back to Bahrain, which is a perfectly safe place, and protest there.
“If anyone thinks I’ve been racist I honestly didn’t mean to be, and I apologise if they think that, and I wasn’t.”
Former British Army officer Mr Stewart, who was stationed in Bahrain in 1969, praised Bahrain as a “wonderful place to live”, adding: “You can worship anything you like in Bahrain – you can worship a tree.”
A Conservative Party spokesman: “We have an established code of conduct and formal processes where complaints can be made in confidence. This process is rightly confidential.”
Kaynak: briturkish.com
