The government of Bahrain is developing quite a reputation for lying – in particular, by circulating false claims of international support for its repression.

Last week, Amnesty International issued a statement about the 14-year-old boy who died during a peaceful demonstration in the kingdom – apparently after being hit by a police teargas canister. 

In the statement published on its website, Amnesty accused the Bahraini police of using excessive force. "The police have a duty to uphold the law, but it is completely unacceptable to throw heavy gas canisters at children," an Amnesty spokesman said. "The authorities must investigate."

The next day, Bahrain's pro-government media carried a very different version of the statement (example here, in Arabic). The Bahraini version said Amnesty had "confirmed" that opposition parties in the kingdom were seeking to exploit children and placing them in demonstrations for "political gains".

This did not appear anywhere in Amnesty's published statement and Amnesty then issued a further statement insisting that it had said no such thing.

It is by no means the first time that something like this has happened.

Back in April, I noted the foreign ministry's highly implausible claim that Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, had declared his support for Bahrain's "security measures" (i.e. its violent suppression of protesters). The ministry also claimed that the UN chief had "praised the political reforms led by His Majesty the King and Bahrain's progress and prosperity at all levels".

This was more or less the opposite of what he actually said. According the UN press release that summarised his remarks, Mr Ban urged "maximum restraint and caution" and hoped that the authorities would start "serious, inclusive dialogue with all stakeholders" as soon as possible.

In June, it was the turn of Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to have words put into her mouth. Pillay had visited Bahrain in an effort to establish a UN mission to investigate rights violations there.

The official Bahrain News Agency quoted her as saying during a meeting with the social development minister: "Certain information which we received about the developments [i.e. unrest] in Bahrain was untrue." On that basis, Pillay had supposedly "acknowledged that the situation in Bahrain is by far different, and is thus incomparable to ongoing unrest in other countries in the region".

The UN then issued an unusually angry statement saying the Bahrain News Agency's report had "grossly misrepresented" the meeting. It continued:

"The High Commissioner would like to stress that she made no such statement, and is disturbed by this blatant distortion of her words. She will formally request the Government officials who attended the meeting to issue a correction."

A correction does not appear to have been forthcoming, though the Bahrain News Agency (which had not in fact been present to report the meeting) did publish an opaque two-paragraph note saying it had got its (mis)information secondhand from the Ministry of Social Development.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 4 September 2011.