Posts Tagged ‘hunger strike’
January 31st, 2012
Fourteen imprisoned activists have begun a one-week
hunger strike in
Bahrain. The activists, who have been imprisoned since March 2011, are protesting the continuous crackdown on demonstrations in Bahrain. The health of several of the activists is at risk –human rights defender AbdulJaleel AlSingace who suffers from
poliomyelitis, a nerve disease, previously suffered a heart attack whilst on hunger strike. Many prisoners, including those held in Jaw and the central region prisons, have announced plans to join this hunger strike.
October 26th, 2010
Guillermo Farinas has
won the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the European Union’s most prestigious human rights award. Farinas has spent much of the last 15 years in jail and has gone on hunger strike more than 20 times. His most recent hunger strike ended in July when the government
agreed to release 52 political prisoners. At the same time as the EU bestowed the accolade, Cuba authorised the
release of a further five prisoners, who were not among the originally specified 52. The released men are due to be transferred to Spain. 39 have already been released, but 13 have refused the deal and remain behind bars.
May 26th, 2010
Film director Jafar Panahi has been
released from Tehran’s Evin prison on a bail of $200,000 (£140,000) after more than two months in custody. Although it has been rumoured he was imprisoned for shooting a film about last June’s disputed presidential elections, it seems more likely his arrest was due to his support for opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. Panahi, who was supposed to sit on the jury of the 2010 Cannes Festival, went on a
hunger strike last week to protest the circumstances of his detention. Cannes jury head, US director Tim Burton, joined with Iranian independent filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami and other international filmmakers’ calls for Panahi’s release.
July 1st, 2009
Reuters photographer Ibrahim Jassam has been on hunger strike for four days protesting his continued detainment by US forces in Iraq. Media watchdogs have urged Iraq’s government to end harassment and intimidation of journalists and are pushing for his release. Read more
here
May 29th, 2009
Cuban journalist Victor Rolando Arroyo is in his second week of hunger strike as a protest to lack of medical attention, bad sanitary conditions in his cell, his cruel treatment, and the fact that he has not been allowed to practice religion. Arroyo was sentenced in April 2003 to 26 years in prison for acting “against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state”. Read more
here
