Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): Lawyer Balqees Al-Manami is not demanding the impossible. All she is asking for is a passport for her infant son and if that is not possible she would even accept a one-way with no return official travel document. That is how desperate she is!

In January 2015, her husband Qassim Majeed Ramadan Alawi was stripped of his Bahraini nationality by a royal decree. He was among what was known as the group of 72. Qassim had previously traveled to Iran fearing arrest.

In January 2016, Balqees gave birth to her son Sayyed Ali and her struggle to attain a citizenship for him began. Balqees applied for a passport at the Immigration and Passports Directorate on February 23, 2016. She followed up the papers for an entire month and upon each inquiry, she was told that "they do not have any updates on the application."

She said that she then sent a request to the under-secretary at the Passports Directorate to expedite her application, noting that this created an additional problem. "One of the employees made me think that the under-secretary contacted the Interior ministry, so I waited for a response for 3 months. Then, I contacted the ministry myself to find out that the passports directorate did not even contact the interior ministry at all," she explains.

"I headed to the National Institute for Human Rights and informed them about my issue. The institute strived to solve my problem contacting the Interior Ministry. I also visited the passports directorate again and the employee there told me that the request was denied because he is a minor, yet when I told him that the Interior Ministry wasn't even informed, he got flustered and said that he is only telling me what he was told to say."

Balqees felt that she was helpless; she cannot go anywhere or travel outside the country to visit her husband and reunite with her family, so she requested a temporary travel document for her infant son. At the under-secretary's office, an employee mocked her son by saying: "Tell me one country that would accept your son and I shall give you an exit permit with no return, that's the easiest thing you could ask for!" Balqees said that she felt offended and that her son was an outcast, "I did not ask anyone to break the law. I want the law to be implemented. It's not difficult. If they don't consider him to be a Bahraini, let them give me an exit permit. What's the problem!," she stressed.

"I want to take my children to their father. If they do not want to issue a passport for my son, then let them at least give me a simple travel permit that would allow me to leave the country with my children and head to their father. Why do the children have to pay the price? I would accept a no-return exit permit if a passport is too much. I am willing to lose my future, job and everything I have here, but I am not willing to lose the stability of my children's lives. Is that too much to ask for?!," Balqees further stated.

Arabic Version