Bahrain's foreign minister has called on citizens of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to vote against a British Academy Broadcasting Award for the Al Jazeera documentary "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark" in an opinion poll on the the British-based RadioTimes website.

The documentary, by May Ying Welsh, Hassan Mahfood, Tuki Laumea and Jon Blair, has been awarded George Polk Award in Journalism, the Scripps Howard Jack R. Howard Award and the UK Foreign Press Association's Documentary of the Year Award.

It has been nominated for the current affairs category of the BAFTA awards, due to be presented on May 27.

The tweets below sent by the foreign minister on Saturday read: "I invite everyone to stand with Bahrain and vote against the harmful Al Jazeera film."

Regime loyalists in Bahrain are being urged to "vote for the Sri Lanka film," while activists critical of the authorities are urging over social media to vote for "Shouting in the Dark".

The vote, it should be added, will not actually affect the results, which have already been decided upon by a jury.