After jailing human rights activists and social media users critical of the government and even going as far as banning protests, the country’s government still insists that it protects its citizens’ right to freedom of expression.
A child protester at a rally in Bahrain, 12 October 2012 – Demotix
In the most recent case, Bahraini officials reportedly sentenced a social media user to six months in jail for insulting the country’s King Hamad on Twitter. He was one of the four Twitter users arrested last month for “defaming public figures on social media” — which, according to the Ministry of Interior, is a no-no:
The acting Director-General said that the freedom of expression was protected under the Bahraini constitution and the law. However, this freedom did not allow the defamation of others. He stressed the importance of using the social media responsibly and ethically.
So expressing discontent with Bahrain’s government seems to fall outside the bounds of what is responsible and ethical, while the online war Bahrain wages against activists and protesters seems to fall within it.
Earlier this week, Bahrain banned all protests, after “repeated abuses” of free expression. The ban is supposedly being used to diffuse what has become an even more violent and desperate situation. In the past two months, security forces have killed two teenagers. After a roadside bomb took the life of a police officer during clashes in the village of Akar, seven were arrested in connection to the attack.
Rather than merely cracking down on dissent, Bahrain would do better to follow through on its promise to implement the 140 of the 176 recommendations that came from this year Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN. Or even follow through on the seemingly long-forgotten recommendations from the Bahrain Independent Commission for Inquiry (BICI) last year.
But Bahrain’s desperation to silence its unrest — rather than address it — is only contributing to the country’s declining situation, and its disregard for reforms only spells out a bleak picture for its human rights situation. While insisting that it protects freedom of expression, Bahrain has actually declared war on it.
Sara Yasin is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship. She tweets at @missyasin
There are no prisoners of conscience in Bahrain — at least that’s what the government would like you to think.
A year ago today, eight opposition activists were given life sentences for their involvement in the country’s anti-government uprising. When NGOs and foreign governments call for the release of political prisoners, particularly those jailed for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association, the regime responds with “We have!”. The dictatorship continues to falsely claims that these individuals have been jailed for criminal or violent offences rather than acknowledging the truth, they are there for voicing their desire for change.
When voices from the international community call for all prisoners of conscience or all those charged solely for the expression of their views to be freed, it makes little dent in Bahrain’s obduracy.
Take the well-known case of the Bahraini medics. For merely doing their jobs, they were arrested, detained, tortured into making false confessions, subjected to an unfair trial in a military court and sentenced to long prison terms. But because that is not what it said on their charge sheet — which included allegations such as smuggling weapons and occupying the main hospital — the Bahraini government refused to admit that they were convicted for expressing their opinions.
Last week nine of the 20 were declared innocent on appeal, leading to awkward questions about why nine leading medical professionals with impressive careers and reputations would all have confessed to crimes they did not commit.
While various detainees are considered to be “prisoners of conscience” by the international community, the Bahraini government continues to insist on painting them as “traitors” and “terrorists”. Mahdi Abu Deeb, for instance, leader of the Bahrain Teachers Union, called for a strike during the start of the country’s uprising last year to call for reform in Bahrain’s education system, and to protest the brutal crackdown against demonstrators gathered at Manama’s Pearl Roundabout. For this, he was then handed a 10-year sentence for “halting the education process”, “inciting hatred of the political regime”, and “attempting to overthrow the regime by force”.
Similarly, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja is one of the most famous human rights defenders in the region, and now the world. The founder of Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), who peacefully called for change at Pearl Roundabout last year, has been branded a “terrorist” or “traitor” by state-owned media, much like other detainees. Alkhawaja was convicted of violent crimes — after documented torture and an unfair military trial — but the Bahraini government still refuses to class him as a political prisoner.
During the Universal Periodic Review process in Geneva last month, Bahraini Human Rights Minister Salah Bin Ali Mohamed Abdulrahman told the Human Rights Council that his country held no prisoners on political charges. “Any such charges have been withdrawn. The only [remaining] cases are criminal cases,” he said.
Instead of this ping-pong conversation between the regime and human rights organisations of “release prisoners of conscience” — “oh we already have”, it might be better to focus attention on the unfair military trials of last year, where 502 people were convicted of a variety of offences, both peaceful and violent. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has called for these convictions to be overturned. Last December she called on the Bahraini regime to “urgently take confidence-building measures including unconditionally releasing those who were convicted in military tribunals or are still awaiting trial for merely exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly.”
This would mean the immediate release and dropping of charges against Abdulhadi Alkhawja and other prominent dissidents including Mahdi Abu Deeb and his deputy Jalila al Salman, and hundreds of others prosecuted in politically-motivated trials but officially convicted of criminal or violent offences. If the regime has real evidence that any of these people have commited violent crimes then it should retry them in a new, fair process.
Of course, this would not solve the problem of those who are being harassed through the civilian courts. Other prominent human rights defenders Zainab Alkhawaja and Nabeel Rajab, president of the BCHR, have been regularly detained over the last few months because of their success in drawing attention to the regime’s abuses. Rajab is currently being targeted for expressing his views on Twitter, where he has over 150,000 followers, and will be detained at least until 27 June. A new crackdown on those using social media is expected as Bahraini officials warn those promoting “sedition” on social networks.
The Bahraini regime should be denied the wriggle room of insisting it has released all prisoners of conscience when many of them were convicted on trumped-up charges of violence. Demanding the release of all those convicted by the kangaroo military court (on any charge) would be a start.
Brian Dooley is Director of the Human Rights Defenders programme at Human Rights First. He tweets at @dooley_dooley
A Bahraini court today ruled that activist Zainab Alkhawaja will serve an additional month in prison for allegedly attacking a policewoman during anti-government protests. Alkhawaja was initially arrested on 21 April, during the weekend of the controversial Bahrain Grand Prix. The activist is also the daughter of jailed activist and hunger striker Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, who is currently serving a life sentence for his involvement in anti-government protests last year. Zainab wrote a letter from prison on 19 May, saying that she would not attend any hearings, even if a court appearance could secure her release:
The judge might think that I will be attending my next trial session. He told my lawyer the last time I was not present that he might have considered releasing me had I gone to court. Not only does that statement carry no weight when spoken by a judge who is ruling in an unfair political trial but what he should release is that it is not my release from prison that I seek.
Yes, I do dream of my daughter, while I sleep and also when I’m awake, but when I am home with her, I know my mind won’t be at peace. Jaffar, an innocent man who was shot in the face with birdshot gun, Jaffar who lost both his eyes. Jaffar who was sentenced in a trial that lasted less than 15 minutes, without a lawyer, without any family members, the judge looked at the blind injured man, and he shouted “Don’t bother sitting, you are sentenced to 2 years in prison.”
I could hold my daughter in my arms, but ill close my eyes and imagine Jafffar hearing his daughters voices after months and months living in prison, in darkness. But as he reaches out to his babies, a guard shouts at him “You’re not allowed to touch them!”
Among them ill see, a handmade wrist band, made by a political prisoner. Hassan Oun, a boy who has been arrested more than 5 times in his young life. Hassan Oun who is a torture victim who spoke out, he dared to come forward and speak up. But his courage did not save him from the hands of his torturers. Hassan was re-arrested, and we could not save him from being subjected to the same nightmare again. Though I never met Hassan, I did meet his younger brother. I still remember his smile as he drank warm milk and told me to take a picture of him “who knows, I might be the next detainee” he said. In a call from prison I was told Ahmed has been injured, when he went to hospital he was detained, for the second time.
In the same prison the Oun brothers are detained in there are hundreds of other political prisoners. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are cells kept for specific families, for example the family of 14yr old martyr Ali Al-Shaikh. Not only was Ali killed, but his family are being punished. Many of his family members have been in and out of jail. Some, the ones who witnessed the killing, have not come out.
I might get released, but young Mansoor won’t be waiting to ask me “what abuses are we documenting today?” Although a high school student he was determined to become an activist, to help in any way he could. Last time I spoke to him he did not ask me what he could do to help, but he asked me to plz pray for him, to pray that they don’t take him back to the interrogation room.
If I get released, every village I pass through will shout the names of countless prisoners of conscience. All the walls will show me their faces. Around me, I will see their grief-stricken mothers and fathers, their wives, their children crying for her children as I write. I am not Zainab only, I am Jaffar and Hassan, I am Ahmed and Abbas, I am Masooma and Mansoor. My case is the case of hundreds of innocent political prisoners in Bahrain, my release, without them, means nothing to me.
I will not be attending my trials, no matter how many they are. Freedom, and not my release, is what I want and dream of. I will sit in my prison cell, I will listen to its walls reciting the poetry of another political prison Sadeq Al-Ghasra, reminding me that our struggle for liberty shall continue not only from inside this prison but even from under the soil.
All my admiration, for my imprisoned brothers and sisters. Whose determination and patience give me hope.
Prominent Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al Khawaja has been serving a life sentence since April 2011 for his involvement in anti-government protests last year. Al Khawaja has now been on hunger strike for 26 days. His daughter, Zainab Al Khawaja, also a human rights activist, writes about her imprisoned father.
When my father started his current hunger strike, he was already weakened as he had just ended a seven-day hunger strike 48 hours before. On the 10th day of this hunger strike my father was taken to the hospital, having collapsed in prison. He was taken back to the hospital on day 13, again on day 17 and again on day 24. Each time the doctor pleaded with him to just eat something, anything; each time my father refused, reiterating that he would only leave the prison free or dead.
That previous seven-day strike, undertaken with his 13 co-defendants/co-inmates, was made to protest the ongoing imprisonment of those who had taken to the streets last February and March and were being punished for demanding civil liberties and democracy. For my father, it was personal as much as political — his younger brother was sitting in the same prison as him. His two sons-in-law were arrested with him and also subjected to torture. His wife was fired from her job of 10 years by order of the Ministry of Interior.
My father is not a fanatic; or rather he is only a fanatic when it comes to believing that every person should have her or his basic human rights respected in full. He has worked his whole life for this principle, by documenting and reporting abuse, by training others to do the same, by working to effectively campaign for human rights, by speaking out against abuse and by joining with others to peacefully protest when rights are systemically trampled.
Abdulhadi Al Khawaja with his granddaughter, Jude
Following his arrest, my father refused to give up on the struggle for human rights; he continued his human rights work behind the walls of a military prison, at a site that is not found on any map. My father paid a high price for speaking out on several occasions in the military trial about the torture he and others were subjected to. When his two-month solitary confinement came to an end my father engaged in discussions in the prison, continuing to spread human rights education and the example of nonviolent protest. My father gave the other political prisoners a full course in human rights. He then asked the commander of the prison for paper so he could write certificates for his fellow inmates to document that they had completed a human rights education course.
When I was growing up with my sisters, and we were living outside Bahrain, my dad would talk about the day we would return and the kind of country we would one day live in — where all our rights would be respected, where we could live with dignity and freedom. We did return to Bahrain in 2001, but what we returned to was not my father’s dream. Though not the nightmare it has since become, it was clear even then that there were limits to individual rights and as a community, one group in Bahrain faced systemic discrimination. My father could not live with that, and so he did what he always did — he started working for human rights and opened the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
Abdulhadi Al Khawaja with the current director of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab
When the uprising in Bahrain started last 14 February, inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, my father quit his job with international human rights organisation Front Line Defenders and went to Pearl Roundabout to join the youth, who seemed all at once to have heard his message. This may have been the closest my father got to his dream, those days at Pearl, but now he is caught in the worst of nightmares. But even here he is teaching, leading by example and proving to be the most dangerous kind of men — the kind whose ideals cannot be shut away.
My father is Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja. He has been beaten, jailed, tortured, abused, sentenced to life in prison in a sham court trial, harassed, intimidated, had his family punished and seen friends and loved ones face harm. The last person who saw my father found him very thin, barely able to walk, stand or even sit up. But they also saw a sparkle in his eye. My father has spent his life struggling for others; he would rather die fighting the only way he can, than to ever give up on his dream. My father is Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, and he is on the 26th day of his hunger strike for freedom.
Zainab Al-Khawaja, daughter of Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, and known as @angryarabiya on Twitter, is a Bahraini activist. Like her father, she has been jailed for protesting. She is a dual Danish and Bahraini citizen
