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It is 12 days since the British authorities confiscated the passport of the Syrian journalist, Zaina Erhaim, a prominent critic of Bashar al-Assad.
And it is four days since press freedom and human rights groups launched a joint protest over a decision that is, to be frank, a disgrace. Read the full article
The Internet Governance in the Middle East and North Africa (iGmena) program held its first-ever Summit in Tunis, Tunisia, from 30 September and to 2 October. iGmena is an initiative of the Hague-based Humanistic Institute for Development (Hivos) (www.hivos.org), which was hosted by Wasabi (www.wasabi.tn), a media & communications company and iGmena’s local partner, at Cogite Coworking Space (www.cogite.tn). Read the full article
In April 2016 the US government called China’s Great Firewall a barrier to trade. This came just months after the US criticised China for cyber spying on American companies, or what the Justice Department called the “great brain robbery”.
“Obama keeps saying that if China continues employing its hacking units to attack US companies, America will tear down the Great Firewall,” Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire, the anonymous group of individuals who work towards circumventing China’s Great Firewall and winners of the 2016 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for digital activism, told Index. “Great – so tear it down, let’s go.”
But it’s not happening, Smith added.
Over on the other side of America’s political spectrum, US senator Ted Cruz has been busy over the last month trying to get the US Congress to act to “prevent the Obama administration from giving the internet” to China. Cruz failed in his mission, as on 1 October the US gave up its remaining control over the internet, with the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) no longer under the direction of the Department of Commerce.
There are now fears that the change will open the door for authoritarian governments, including China’s, to get control of the network of networks, leading to greater censorship.
In Cruz’s first letter to ICANN, kicking off his attempt to stop the move, the former presidential hopeful quoted GreatFire’s research into internet censorship in China.
“I then reached out to them and said: ‘Hey, we’re GreatFire, what more do you want to know?’” Smith said. “ICANN has a representative in Beijing and that representative sits in the Cyberspace Administration office, which is censorship central, so Cruz’s campaign was very interested in that.”
Although GreatFire would not align themselves with a political party, Smith added that if Cruz really believes what he is saying and GreatFire can help, the organisation will support him on this issue.
GreatFire’s own efforts to put a hole in China’s firewall took a new turn in July 2016 with the launch of its groundbreaking new site to test virtual private networks within the country, Circumvention Central. “Stable circumvention is a difficult thing to find in China so this new site a way for people to see what’s working and what’s not working,” Smith told Index at the time.
Speaking three months on, Smith told us that although the site works and customers are overwhelmingly pleased with the service, it isn’t making as many sales as he’d hoped it would. In August the platform sold a few dozen subscriptions but Smith was really hoping to see numbers in the hundreds by this stage.
“Maybe we’re not getting enough people to the site,” Smith said. “I guess it’s timing too; people have other subscriptions that haven’t yet expired, so they’re not ready.”
“What we have done, however, is engaged with some VPN firms like a paid consultancy service and helped them improve what they are doing,” Smith added. “It’s actually been quite revealing because we can see the volatility in the market and how one service may work really well this month and next month it will basically be useless.”
GreatFire is working closely with VPN services Hide My Ass and AnchorFree, both of whom have been introductions from Index on Censorship.
The Chinese government has taken notice of Circumvention Central, sending an email to all VPN providers listed on the site asking them not to stop operating in China but to cease working with GreatFire specifically.
One reads: “Please immediately stop working with GreatFire.org. GreatFire.org is an anti-China website as declared by the Cyberspace Administration of China. We hereby express our strong concern and request you stop working with GreatFire at the earliest time possible.”
“So there’s no real serious threat from the government there,” Smith said, adding that although Chinese authorities are constantly trying to take down or attack the site, they have been wholly unsuccessful.
GreatFire is also working on its free internet browser that allows users to access content that’s behind China’s firewall. The browser is currently available in English and Chinese, but will soon be available in traditional Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Croatian and Persian.
“We’re currently looking for publications in those languages that are blocked so we can help provide access,” said Smith.
The main focus for the future, however, is the VPN service. “We believe we have the best circumvention tool on the market and we want to show people how it works and drive adoption.”
Nabeel Rajab during a protest in London in September 2014 (Photo: Milana Knezevic)
Join Index on Censorship, English Pen and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy for a vigil outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at 12 pm on Thursday 6 October to mark the trial of Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, who could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
The Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award-winning Rajab has been subjected to ongoing judicial harassment by Bahrain’s government.
Your support will show the UK government that it must do more to pressure its ally Bahrain to respect freedom of expression and release Rajab unconditionally.
When: Thursday 6 October at 12pm Where: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, King Charles Street, Whitehall, London SW1A 2AH (Map)
Nabeel Rajab was arrested on 13 June and prosecuted on charges of spreading “false or malicious news, statements, or rumours” during wartime, “offending a foreign country” and “offending a public institution” under articles 133, 215 and 216 of the Penal Code and faces up to 15 years’ imprisonment. His sentencing is due on 6 October 2016. Nabeel has also been banned from travel ban since November 2014.
This is in connection to comments made on Twitter in 2015 documenting allegations of torture at the Central Jau Prison and criticizing the Saudi coalition war in Yemen.
Following the publication a letter by Nabeel to the New York Times, the Public Prosecution Office charged him with “intentionally broadcasting false news and malicious rumours abroad impairing the prestige of the state”. The charge could lead to an additional one-year prison sentence.
FCO Policy on Nabeel and Bahrain
The FCO has expressed “concern” over the re-arrest of Nabeel but has not called for his release.
At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the UK stated it will be continuing its technical assistance to Bahrain and encouraged “constructive and inclusive dialogue.”
The UK’s statements do not reflect the facts on the ground: Bahrain’s human rights situation is worsening. Nabeel‘s charges, all related to his free expression and carrying lengthy prison terms, are a reflection of Bahrain’s failure to reform.
As part of Nafasi Week UK, In Place Of War is showcasing some of the world’s most groundbreaking artists, activists and creative entrepreneurs from areas of conflict, post-conflict and humanitarian disaster.
IPOW has invited a group of international cultural producers from Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, DR Congo, Brazil, India and more to London to speak at Richmix alongside some of the UK’s most prolific artists and social commentators.
Each speaker will deliver a talk on creative activism, cultural production, cultural spaces and digital.
Speakers include:
Karina Goulordova, Creative Space, Lebanon
Mc Benny Acholi Muding, Northern Uganda HipHop Culture-NUHC, Uganda
Robert Mũnũku, Mau Mau Collective, Kenya
Fabio Pedroza, Moreis Convida, Brazil
Dan Glass, The Glass Is Half Full, UK
Lorraine Charlotte Bgoya, Magamba Network, Zimbabwe
Miqueas Figueroa, Tiuna El Fuerte, Venezuela
Laurent Kasindi, Search for Common Ground, DR Congo
Fenella Dawnay & Kirstin Shirling, Good Chance Theatre, UK
Felipe Altenfelder, Fora Do Exio, Brazil
David Heinemann, Index on Censorship, UK
Harnaman Singh Mehta, India
Jonny Hesketh, The Yellow House, UK
When: 18 October, 12-6pm Where: Richmix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA Date Entry: Free. Email shereen@inplaceofwar.net to register.
Join Index on Censorship to celebrate the launch of our latest magazine exploring anonymity through a range of in-depth features, interviews and illustrations from around the world. The special report looks at the pros and cons of masking identities from the perspective of a variety of players, from online trolls to intelligence agencies, whistleblowers, activists, artists, journalists, bloggers and fixers.
We’ll hear from writer, blogger and activist Cory Doctorow on the importance of defending anonymity and take an interactive phone-hacking journey into The Secret Life of Your Mobile Phone with tech journalist Geoff White. The launch will be held at the home of the suitably secretive VPN providers Hide My Ass!
There will be also complimentary drinks.
When: Tuesday 25 October 6:30pm – 8:30pm Where: Hide My Ass!, AVG Technologies UK, 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6JS (map) Tickets: This event is fully booked.
Order your high-quality print copy of our anonymity special here, or take out a digital subscription from anywhere in the world via Exact Editions (just £18* for the year). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide.
*Will be charged at local exchange rate outside the UK.
Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Carlton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
Read more about this issue of the magazine here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”1″ element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1478627753205-821a5180-df34-10″ taxonomies=”7112, 662″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Battle of Ideas 2016
A weekend of thought-provoking public debate taking place on 22 and 23 October at the Barbican Centre. Join the main debates or satellite events.
Are reactions against offensive comics part of healthy debate over where we draw the line or is there something uniquely censorious in the reaction of audiences and comics alike? Should promoters and venues play a role in deciding what is acceptable, or is that between performers and the public? Has the online age made it easier for comics to find platforms for their work, or contributed to a more toxic atmosphere? Is the fear of offence killing comedy or are comics simply losing their nerve?
Chaired by stand-up comedian Andrew Doyle, the panel will include: Steve Bennett, the editor of Chortle; Will Franken, satirist, comedian, writer; Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive, Index on Censorship; Timandra Harkness, journalist, writer & broadcaster; Tom Walker, actor; creator, Jonathan Pie.
The Syria coordinator for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), Ms Erhaim has been recognised by a number of organisations internationally – including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in 2015 – for her work training citizen journalists to report on the conflict within Aleppo.
Ms Erhaim had her old passport, which remains valid but is effectively unusable because the pages are filled, and was able to enter the UK for the debate. Further travel may be impossible, however, as Ms Erhaim no longer has a passport with which to apply for a new visa to enter Europe.
When Ms Erhaim challenged this decision, she was told to seek consular advice from the Syrian government in Damascus.
“It seems quite astonishing that the UK would accede to a request from a government whom it has only this week accused of being complicit in war crimes – especially when it is clear that the Syrian government is using tools, such as passport cancellations, to harass those who oppose or expose its behaviour,” Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship, said.
Anthony Borden, IWPR executive director and managing director, said: “Zaina Ehraim is internationally recognized as one of the most courageous and professional independent voices from Syria – working at great personal risk to support media and civic society inside the country to inform the world about this terrible conflict and keep hope alive for some kind of positive future.”
“The idea that the British government – which has directly supported our work in Syria – should accede to the demands of the Syrian authorities to seize her passport is profoundly offensive to any democratic thinking, directly undermines the effort to build civic options inside Syria, and sends precisely the wrong message to the criminal regime in Damascus,” he added.
Four organisations – the Council for Arab-British Understanding, Index on Censorship, IWPR, and RSF – have raised the matter with the Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
“We are appalled that the UK authorities have allowed our system to be manipulated in this way. British law is meant to protect freedom of expression, not to be used to harass critical journalists at the urging of repressive regimes. We call on the Home Office to take immediate steps to assist Erhaim and issue a public statement in her support,” said Rebecca Vincent, RSF’s UK Bureau Director.
Chris Doyle, Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding said: “The precedent set by seizing Erhaim’s passport and the message it sends to oppressive governments around the world is alarming. In theory, any vicious regime could demand the return of a passport from any government merely by fraudulently claiming that the passport is stolen.”
The Frontline Club is also supporting a campaign to raise awareness of the issue.
If you would like to write a letter in support of Zaina Erhaim, address your correspondence to:
Norwegian musician Moddi’s new album, Unsongs, is made up of renditions of songs from around the world that had been banned, censored or silenced. Unsongs includes cover versions of songs from countries including China, Russia, Mexico and Vietnam, on topics such as drugs, war and religion.
Index on Censorship caught up with Moddi on Twitter to find out more.
Moddi will hand over the stage at three of the biggest gigs on his current European tour to unleash the power of free expression, replacing the support band with the genuinely banned.
In Amsterdam on 1 October, Maryam Al-Khawaja will share her and her family’s story of imprisonment and exile in the struggle for democracy in Bahrain. In London on 3 October, Vanessa Berhe will speak about life in the prison state of Eritrea and her campaign One Day Seyoum fighting to free her journalist uncle Seyoum Tsehaye who has been in jail for 15 years. In Berlin on 6 October, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently will tell how the Syrian civil war has destroyed the free expression of a generation. Co-founder Abdalaziz Alhamza will share the story of how and why he co-founded it inside IS-controlled territory.
Burkinabe rapper and activist with Le Balai Citoyen, Smockey, became the inaugural Music in Exile Fellow at the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards in April 2016. In July his recording studio, the lionised Studio Abazon, was destroyed in a fire.
“All my music files since 2001, including my master tapes and those of my productions and clients, were lost,” Smockey told Index on Censorship. “I was working on the album of a young rapper named Balla, volume three of my compilation called La Part des Ténèbres and original music for a mobile phone service product – all gone.”
Two months on, it still isn’t clear what caused the blaze. “I don’t have any news about ongoing investigations, so all I know is that anyone could have caused it apart from me,” he said.
Studio Abazon was impossible to insure due to a September 2015 firebomb attack by forces loyal to Burkina Faso’s ousted president, which destroyed the studio. Having recently finished rebuilding in the months before the fire, Smockey said he is obliged to do so again. “But this time I will build it underground to make it more secure.”
Some of Smockey’s friends have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the studio and the rapper said he would welcome all the help he can get.
When he last spoke with Index, Smockey was writing tracks for his new album. Plans to record have now been put on hold.
Still, the setback hasn’t put the rapper off performing. He recently played to packed gigs in Switzerland, Germany and Belgium, where he took part in the Esperanzah! music festival. In October he will take the stage in his home country at the Waga Hip Hop Festival. In November he will return to Germany — for appearances in Berlin and Munich — and Switzerland. In December, he will perform in Spain.
Le Balai Citoyen, which Smockey co-founded, is a grassroots political movement which helped bring to an end the three-decade rule of former president Blaise Compaoré. It is currently involved in a new project to build a memorial for the late revolutionary Burkinabe leader, and hero of Smockey’s, Thomas Sankara. To raise funds and awareness for the memorial, Smockey will soon perform at Revolution Square, where up to a million people had gathered to demand Compaore’s resignation in 2014.
“We are just nine months past the insurrection, so now is a good time for the memorial,” Smockey told Index. “Seeing it every day in the city would help put pressure on those in power — those who think they can manipulate us but are mistaken — to do their job.”
Rehabilitating the memory of Sankara – who was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d’état led by Compaoré in 1987 – is, therefore, an important part of bringing about of justice for all affected by the crimes of the former regime, Smockey said.
The former prime minister of Burkina Faso, Luc-Adolphe Tiao, who was appointed by Compaoré, was this month charged and jailed for murder. Smockey welcomes this as a step forward for the country.
“We encourage everyone who is implicated in these crimes to stand before justice in this country, at least because we have a certain sense of honour,” he said. “Burkina Faso literally means the land of men with integrity, so we would like to trust the justice of our country.”
Le Balai Citoyen is now working with a coalition of seven other organisations, collectively called Ditanyè, to tackle the challenges facing the country and to preserve “the positive gains from the revolution,” Smockey added.
Looking forward, he understands the country must have priorities and the courage to define them. “After justice, which is necessary for reconciliation, we have to work on the economic recovery and jobs for young people,” he said. “We want to work now.”
Nominations are now open for 2017 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. You can make yours here.
Winners of the 2016 Freedom of Expression Awards: from left, Farieha Aziz of Bolo Bhi (campaigning), Serge Bambara — aka “Smockey” (Music in Exile), Murad Subay (arts), Zaina Erhaim (journalism). GreatFire (digital activism), not pictured, is an anonymous collective. Photo: Sean Gallagher for Index on Censorship
Monday marked the beginning of Banned Books Week. To celebrate the freedom to read, Index on Censorship staff explore some of their favourite, and some of the most important, banned or challenged books.
Ryan McChrystal – Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan’s autobiographical work Borstal Boy was banned in Ireland in December 1958. His London publisher, Hutchinson’s, had sent a batch of copies to Dublin to be sold at a Christmas market but they were confiscated at the port. Behan was outraged that a group of “country yobs” could prevent the distribution of his book.
Borstal Boy is the story of how a 16-year-old Behan landed himself in a series of institutions for young offenders in Kent, having been charged with membership of the IRA, and what happened to him after that.
Although Ireland’s Censorship of Publications Board never explained why the book was banned, it probably had something to do with its depictions of adolescents talking about sex and its pillorying of Irish social attitudes, republicanism and the Catholic Church. The board is, after all, known for its stringent adherence to Roman Catholic values.
When Behan later learned that the book was also banned in Australia and New Zealand, he took solace in song and humour as he went around Dublin singing:
“My name is Brendan Behan, I’m the latest of the banned
Although we’re small in numbers we’re the best banned in the land, We’re read at wakes and weddin’s and in every parish hall,
And under library counters sure you’ll have no trouble at all.”
David Heinemann – From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
Running the Freedom of Expression Awards’ Fellowship and helping brave people who are often fighting totalitarian regimes can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. How can one person or organisation ever hope to defeat an entire dictatorship?
They can’t, of course, but Gene Sharp’s little book reminds me that “the deliberate, non-violent disintegration of dictatorships” is possible when people work together in certain ways. Part handbook, part political pamphlet, it’s an invaluable toolbox for any serious democratic activist. Its potency was illustrated last year when a group of young Angolans were imprisoned simply for trying to get together and discuss it at a book club.
The fact that I could read it on my commute home reminded me never to take my freedoms for granted.
Vicky Baker – The Bible
The Bible is not an obvious choice for me as I’m an atheist, but loosely picking up on that misattributed Voltaire quote, I would defend anyone’s right to read it – or indeed any other religious book.
Pope Francis has called The Bible “an extremely dangerous book”. Owning it or reading it can get you still get you imprisoned or killed in certain parts of the world. This is the sort of book banning that we should all be extremely worried about, whatever your religion.
These days I don’t even have a copy in my house, but its stories formed part of my childhood. When I grew up I learnt that my hometown, Amersham in Buckinghamshire, also had an important connection to censorship of The Bible. In the 16th century a group of local Lollards were burned at the stake for wanting to translate the book from Latin to English; some of their children were forced to light the pyre.
Known as the Amersham Martyrs, they have since been honoured in a memorial stone, costumed walking tours, and through occasional community plays about their lives, staged in a local church. (Imagine if the bishop who sentenced them saw this today.)
Sadly, we live in a world where censorship of the Bible is not ancient history. In 2014, an American man was sent to labour camp in North Korea for leaving a Bible in a restaurant’s bathroom when visiting as a tourist. It was deemed a crazy act – and, indeed, the move also endangered his local tour guides – but it is outrageous that simply leaving a book behind, so readers can choose to pick it up or not, can still lead to such punishments.
David Sewell – The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
One of those cases in the USA where the pressure to ban comes not from the authorities, but from citizens wanting it pulled from libraries or schools. Complaints were made about its sweary language and its graphic depictions of violence and death. But there again it’s about a grunt’s eye view of the Vietnam war, so go figure.
Only this is really a remarkable work of fiction, which is highly literary in its narrative form. It uses stories to try and construct the extreme experience of war, but also uses war to explore the drive to create stories for ourselves. Language is used to defang terror on the battlefield, stories are invented (and embellished through the re-telling) to keep dead comrades alive, because if they are allowed to die, then it brings death one step closer to the surviving soldiers.
A fascinating book that tries to put words to the unsayable and unspeakable, and its would-be censors are attempting to make it a different kind of unspeakable and unsayable.
Kieran Etoria-King – Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe
One of the most enduring, darkly funny things I’ve ever read was the opening chapter of Tom Sharpe’s 1971 novel Riotous Assembly, in which a South African police chief argues with an old white woman who shot her black chef in the garden of her stately home. As two deputies collect up the obliterated corpse of the man she killed with a four-barrelled elephant gun, Miss Hazelstone, who graphically describes her illicit love affair with the chef, demands to be arrested for murder, while a disgusted Kommandant van Heerden insists that the killing of a black person is not murder. Meanwhile, the entire police force of the fictional town of Piemburg, operating under mistaken intelligence, are engaged in a fierce and escalating firefight at the gate, unaware that they are actually shooting at each other from behind cover.
Sharpe had lived in South Africa from 1951 to 1961 before he was deported over a play he staged that criticised the government, so he had an intimate knowledge of the country and Riotous Assembly, a hilarious send-up of the South African police force, is driven as much by real venom and contempt for the Apartheid system as it is by vulgar humour. Of course, that system wasn’t going to tolerate such mockery and the book was banned in South Africa as well as Zimbabwe.
Helen Galliano – The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
I first came across The Master and Margarita – considered to be one of the finest novels to come out of the Soviet Union – as a performance student at Goldsmiths and a lover of magical realism. I immediately fell into Bulgakov’s wild and dangerous world of talking cats, decapitations, magic shows, Satan’s midnight ball and plenty of vodka. I was hooked, reading it multiple times throughout my third year and even created a performance reimagining Margarita’s transformation into a witch.
The forward to the 1997 translation of the novel reads: “Mikhail Bulgakov worked on this luminous book throughout one of the darkest decades of the century. His last revisions were dictated to his wife a few weeks before his death in 1940 at the age of forty-nine. For him, there was never any question of publishing the novel. The mere existence of the manuscript, had it come to the knowledge of Stalin’s police, would almost certainly have led to the permanent disappearance of its author.”
Faced with persecution, Bulgakov burned the first manuscript of The Master and Margarita, only to re-write it later from memory. It was eventually published nearly three decades after his death and since then “manuscripts don’t burn”, a famous line from the book, has come to symbolise the power and determination of human creativity against oppression.
Great literature and great ideas will always survive.
What’s it like to be an author of a banned or challenged book? How can librarians support authors who find themselves in this situation? To mark Banned Books Week, Vicky Baker, deputy editor of Index on Censorship magazine, will chair an online discussion with three authors on 29 September, followed by a Q&A. It is free to join, although attendees must register in advance.
On Sunday 25 September Nabeel Rajab was transferred from the West Riffa Police Station to solitary confinement in the East Riffa Police Station ahead of his sentencing next week.
“It’s been over a hundred days since Nabeel was arrested and charged and am very worried about his well-being. He has been treated harshly and sent back to a place where he suffered complete isolation in facilities not fit for purpose,” Sumaya Rajab, Nabeel’s wife, said.
The last time the 2012 Index on Censorship award-winning Rajab was held in East Riffa, he required urgent medical care after two weeks of isolation in deplorable conditions. The president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights faces up to 15 years in prison on 6 October on three charges related to his posts on social media.
Rajab is currently being held in a filthy cell. He has not been given a reason for his transfer, and when he tried to ask a police officer, he was screamed at and insulted. When his family delivered clothes and toiletries to the station, officers dirtied them with water and soil before giving them to Rajab. The police officers refused the family’s attempt to give Rajab a radio.
Rajab’s continued detention in police stations is extraordinary. Male detainees are normally only held in police custody until formal charges are brought against them; they are then transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Centre for pre-trial detention. Police stations do not have the facilities for long-term detention. Rajab, who was charged a day after his arrest, has requested multiple times for his rightful transfer to Dry Dock, as has his lawyer. These requests have all been denied.
Rajab has been held in pre-trial detention since his 13 June 2016 arrest. He was initially held in East Riffa. After 15 days in solitary confinement – which the UN’s top expert judges may amount to torture – he required urgent medical attention. Rajab was rushed to the Bahrain Defence Force hospital with breathing difficulties, an irregular heartbeat and a weak immune system.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy: “Nabeel Rajab’s prosecution is part of the Bahraini monarchy’s expansion of authoritarianism and his imprisonment emboldens dictatorship. The US and UK need to step up and criticise this ally, which they have supported with arms and assistance despite the crushing of peaceful critics.”
After being released by the hospital, and police transferred him to the West Riffa police station. His treatment improved at that facility: Rajab was no longer kept strictly in solitude and allowed more regular phone calls.
His family are concerned that his health will decline again and think that this latest transfer suggests a harsh prison sentence will be handed down in October.
Rajab faces multiple charges of “insulting a statutory body”, “insulting a neighboring country”, and “disseminating false rumors in time of war”. These are in relation to remarks he tweeted and retweeted on Twitter in 2015 about torture at Bahrain’s Jau prison and the humanitarian crisis caused by the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Since 2011, Rajab has faced ongoing judicial harassment and prison sentences for his vocal activism. He was placed on a travel ban in 2014 and has been unable to leave the country.
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