A Bahraini human rights group
claims its website and Twitter account has been hacked by anti-government
protesters.

The Bahraini Human Rights
Watch Society’s website www.bhrws.org and
Twitter account @bhrws2004 have been suspended since Saturday, according to
reports.

It happened shortly before the group’s secretary-general Faisal Fulad
was due to attend the 29th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council
(HRC) in Geneva, which started on Monday and continues until July 3.

The group appears to be using a new Twitter account, @bhrws, to
publicise that it has been hacked.

It tweeted a Gulf Daily News article in
which Fulad is quoted as saying: “For two weeks now, we were actively using our
social media accounts to highlight the true picture of Bahrain and even planned
to raise this during the HRC meeting.

“Hackers targeted our website first and then our Twitter account, which
has thousands of followers, in an attempt to silence us ahead of the high-level
meeting in Geneva.”

The society has reportedly been highlighting issues including the
exploitation of children by anti-government protesters. It has also been
promoting a law that would increase the rights of Shi’ite women that have
suffered as a result of domestic disputes.

“If these groups think we will keep quiet because they hack our social
media account and website, then they are mistaken,” Fulad told the newspaper.