Last night, Bahamas Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell announced on a national news program, that during the interception in Bahamian waters of a vessel containing undocumented migrants from Haiti, a cell phone was found containing messages from an unnamed local activist, warning the migrants that the authorities were about to descend upon them. He said the phone was turned over to the police.

The GBHRA and other human rights defenders in The Bahamas are extremely concerned that the authorities are seeking to use this questionable story to discredit human rights defenders in general, or one in particular, in the eyes of the public and further heighten the atmosphere of hostility and intimidation in which we are working.

Worse, we are afraid that trumped up charges may even be used prosecute a human rights defender falsely under the harsh new immigration laws, which make "harboring an illegal" a serious crime carrying a lengthy prison sentence, all in an effort to silence our opposition to some of their new policies.

Indeed this would constitute the fulfillment of an ominous warning that has been hanging over our heads for some time: Minister Mitchell himself has claimed that human rights defenders may be aiding human smugglers "wittingly or unwittingly".

Nor is that the only instance where the threat of prosecution has been used to try and silence human rights defenders. Minister Mitchell also reported a community meeting of people of Haitian descent to the police, claiming it constituted a national security issue. He has threatened GBHRA's president with prosecution for criminal libel and warned, in response to criticism by activists, that Bahamian citizenship can be revoked. His personal complaint to the country’s national communications regulator was also followed by the cancellation of a Haitian-Bahamian radio show earlier this year.

Human rights defenders in The Bahamas are more afraid than ever. We don't know who the authorities plan to target or victimize, and we are all looking over our shoulders in trepidation.

We have already alerted and are working with our international partners, as well as our monitor for the protection of human rights defenders at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) as a result of this most urgent and concerning situation.

We humbly ask that you, our partners in the local and international media, do all you can to highlight what we believe to be a very dangerous situation for human rights defenders in The Bahamas. We sincerely thank you for your ongoing help and support,

– The officers and members of the Grand Bahama Human Rights Association