Bahrain Mirror: After discovering bone remnants, residents of the Bahraini village of Zinj expressed their protest against the decision of the administration of Jaffaria Endowments (Waqf) to lease the Al-Kharis cemetery to an investor to build a commercial project.

The residents wrote a petition refusing the Jaffaria Endowments' move, stressing that the Al-Kharis cemetery which is considered one of the oldest cemeteries in Bahrain has always been "targeted by greedy investors and some of those affiliated to official bodies. A large part of it was leased for a commercial project."

"The remaining part of the graveyard is still targeted by the current administration of Jaffaria Endowments," they added, explaining that during the past few days and in the middle of the day "the bulldozers of the investor entered the cemetery and demolished the graves to the ground. "They are also still determined to continue the construction, as they prepared piles of sand as a step to begin construction. This violates the sanctity of the dead buried in the graveyard," they stressed, demanding the Jaffaria Endowments to "annul the lease contract and prepare the graveyard to bury dead people.

Jaffaria Endowments Directorate chairman, Sheikh Mohsen Al-Asfoor, said that the Al-Kharis cemetery "is considered one of the abandoned cemeteries in which no one has been buried since more than 70 years," pointing out that "the Jaffaria Endowments has received a written permit from the Supreme Sharia Appeals Court-Jaffaria Department allowing them to invest it for the sake of charity organizations instead of leaving it with no use."

Arabic Issue