The leader of Bahrain’s main opposition group, Al-Wefaq Secretary-General Sheikh Ali Salman, said that “the deterioration of the economic situation in the country is a result of rejecting political reform.”

The Bahraini opposition figure Majeed Milad received a distinction for his Master’s thesis entitled “Public Opinion Trends of Arabian Gulf Citizens on Gulf Cooperation Council Performance”.

The Tactical Report website reported that “a Bahraini Royal Guard delegation is in the process of visiting Paris to prepare for a deal to purchase Sherpa Light armored vehicles from Renault Trucks Defense.”

The undersecretary of the Ministry of Labour and Social Development Sabah Al-Dosari said that the Ministry has received complaints filed by foreign employees working in one of the private Bahraini hospitals stating that they have been deprived of their salaries for more than 8 months.

The United Nations News Centre published a report about a phone call between the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, explaining that Ban urged the Bahraini Government to “take further measures to foster peaceful political dialogue amongst all Bahrainis.”

Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces said that “Bahrain’s Foreign Minister should solve his country’s problems instead of interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs”, pointing out that “those statements are considered to be a blatant interference in Baghdad's affairs.

A Bahraini court sentenced on Sunday (January 17, 2016) to life imprisonment three protesters, whom the Bahraini Interior Ministry had accused of attempting to murder policemen in the village of Diraz, west of the Bahraini capital Manama.

The Secretary-General of the National Adala (Justice) movement, extremist Salafist Mohiuddin Khan, said that the Sunni Endowments (Waqf) in Bahrain ordered Friday preachers to not speak of the decisions made by the government to lift subsidies as well as the high cost of living.

Angry protestors clashed with Bahraini regime forces that used force to disperse peaceful demonstrators in the island of Sitra, southeast of the capital Manama on Friday (January 15, 2016).

Thousands of Bahrainis took to the streets on Friday (January 15, 2016) to express their opposition to the government policy of lifting subsidies on the basic commodities and services and depriving the families of political prisoners from social assistance.

The European-Bahraini Organization for Human Rights (EBOHR) said that detainees held in cell-block 10 in the pre-trial detention unit in Dry Dock prison were subjected to humiliating searching procedures before matters developed into verbal quarrels between the detainees and prison officers who started beating each other.

The committee of Bilad Al-Qadeem detainees said that the number of detainees from the village have reached 82, according to the latest local statistics carried out in January.

Sayed Abbas Sayed Kadhem (40 years old) from the Bahraini village of Saar was the first victim of Sickle Cell Anaemia in 2016. However, Haj Maatouk Omran (65 yearsold ), from Mahaza in the island of Sitra, passed away on Wednesday (January 13, 2016) and was listed as the second victim.

The Bahrain Forum for Human Rights (BFHR) president Yusuf Rabie stated that the Bahraini authorities employ laws to be a suppressing tool against the regime’s opponents. The law now has the same power of repression as the birdshot firearm “the shotgun”.

In a statement, Bahrain’s clerics described what the government has committed by lifting subsidies on meat, raising gasoline prices and promising to raise tariffs of electricity, water and other life necessities as “targeting citizens in the necessities of their life and restricting their livelihood.”

A Bahraini court sentenced a suspect (23 years old) in absentia to 7 years in prison over planting hoax bomb at a roundabout in Bahrain’s Tubli.

The revolutionary forces called for “diverse civil disobedience” on the fifth anniversary of the uprising in Bahrain under the slogan “Al-Nimr’s Disobedience” for “the leading role played by the martyr Sheikh Al-Nimr.”

British Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Tobias Ellwood, called on all those with concerns about mistreatment in Bahraini prisons to directly report to the Ombudsman office in the Bahraini capital Manama.

Bahrain's First High Court of Appeals held its fifth hearing of the Bahraini detained opposition leader and Al-Wefaq Secretary-General Sheikh Ali Salman's trial on January 14, 2016 and is to issue its verdict on March 30.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and other international and Bahraini nongovernmental organizations strongly condemned the repeated use of the death penalty by Bahraini authorities and called on the government to commute the death and life sentences.