Georgetown graduate Erin Kilbride (COL ’12) was deported from Bahrain on Saturday for what the government described as her “radical” writings on Twitter and other websites.
Kilbride, originally from Portland, Maine, left the gulf kingdom and was to arrive in the United States later Saturday.
Unrest between Bahrain’s Sunni-led monarchy and majority Shiite population has risen in recent months, and the government has begun a crackdown on dissent, approving tougher measures against those deemed terrorists and giving authorities the ability to strip people convicted of violence of their citizenship.
Bahrain’s Ministry of State for Communications said Kilbride, who was working as a children’s English teacher and research assistant in the gulf region, worked “illegally as an unaccredited journalist” in violation of her visa and published articles “deemed to incite hatred against the government and members of the royal family.” The state-run Bahrain News Agency reported that the government had received complaints about Kilbride’s writings.
The ministry also said Kilbride’s landlord in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, reported her for hanging a flag of the Lebanese Shiite political party and militant group Hezbollah in her apartment. Bahrain’s Minister of State Communications, Fawaz al Khalifa, posted a photo said to depict the Hezbollah flag inKilbride’s bedroom on his official Twitter account Saturday.
A month before her deportation, Kilbride wrote an article for news website Muftah.org criticizing Bahraini monarch King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for supporting the Egyptian military’s ousting of former President Mohamed Morsi while cracking down on Shiite Muslim protestors in his own kingdom.
“The modus operandi in Bahrain has been less about affirming the ‘aspirations of the people’ than about silencing popular demands via imprisonment of activists and strict bans on rallies calling for political reforms and equal rights,” Kilbride, who Muftah lists as co-editor for its Yemen and Gulf States pages, wrote.
The website’s mission statement emphasizes its commitment to “free and open debate” on the Middle East and North Africa and coverage of “issues and concerns that matter to the region’s people.”
Kilbride, who majored in Arabic and women’s and gender studies at Georgetown, has interned for various human rights organizations, including the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council and the Penal Reform International, which advocates for prisoner justice in the Arab world, as well as the U.S. State Department. According to her biography on Muftah.org, she intends to pursue a master’s degree in human rights at the London School of Economics in the fall.
