10 Apr 18 | Bahrain, Bahrain News, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Ciaran Willis, Lauren Brown and Samantha Chambers
Zainab and Maryam al-Khawaja
The daughters of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, the co-founder of Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, participated in a demonstration on Monday 9 April outside the Bahrain Embassy in London calling for his release on the seventh anniversary of his arrest.
Maryam and Zainab al-Khawaja joined NGOs and fellow supporters, as they chanted “free free Abdulhadi” and held placards with a picture of the Bahraini human rights activist.
It marked seven years since Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, founder of the 2012 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award-winning Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was imprisoned for his involvement in peaceful pro-democracy protests that swept the country during the Arab Spring. On 9 April 2011 twenty masked men broke into his house, dragged him down the stairs and arrested him in front of his family.
Bahrain has a poor track record on human rights, with many reports of torture and human rights defenders in jail. Al- Khawaja was part of the Bahrain 13, a group of journalists and activists who faced unfair trials following the unrest.
During his time in prison, Al-Khawaja has been tortured, sexually abused and admitted to hospital requiring surgery on a broken jaw.
His daughter Maryam al-Khawaja was imprisoned in Bahrain for a year before leaving the country in 2014. She faces prosecution on charges including insulting the king and defamation. She told Index: “For me, this isn’t just about my dad, it’s a reminder that we have thousands of prisoners in Bahrain, and we need to remember all of them, and we need to be fighting on behalf of all of them. These are all prisoners of conscience.”
A number of prominent Bahraini campaigners took part in the demonstration.
Jawad Fairooz, a former Bahrain MP and president of SALAM for Democracy and Human Rights, said: “We’re here to support Abdulhadi as a symbol of the demand of the people of Bahrain who want to live in the country with dignity and freedom.”
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy and an activist who fled the country following torture, said: “I’m proud to belong to a nation that Abdulhadi is a part of. Abdulhadi to me is one of the most inspirational individuals.”
Cat Lucas, programme manager at English Pen’s Writers at Risk initiative, said that the government could be doing a lot more to challenge what is going on in Bahrain. She hopes the Bahraini Embassy will finally act, not just in the case of al-Khawaja, “but in the case of lots of writers and activists who are imprisoned for their peaceful human rights activities”.
Protesters have gathered outside the Embassy once a month since January 2018 to highlight the dire human rights situation and ask the UK government to take action.
Al- Khawaja’s daughter Zainab called on the UK to hold the Bahraini regime accountable: “Major governments are still supporting the Bahraini regime with weapons and political training. They’re the people behind them. I can feel as angry here as I would protesting in Bahrain, because I know what the government here is responsible for. I know one of the reasons people are being killed and tortured in Bahrain, including my father, is the support from the British and American governments.”
A group of NGOs, including Index on Censorship and Pen International, signed a letter last week calling on Bahrain to cease its abuse of fundamental human rights.They asked the authorities to immediately and unconditionally free Abdulhadi, provide proper access to medical care and allow international NGOs and journalists access to Bahrain.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lkS7Fsyqso”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1523361455279-ef10ef07-647f-1″ taxonomies=”716″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
21 Jul 17 | Bahrain, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
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Index on Censorship welcomes UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s interest in human rights. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 2016 Annual Human Rights Report, released on Thursday 20 July, highlights the UK’s work to promote human rights around the world and sets out a list of 30 “Human Rights Priority Countries”, including Bahrain, Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
In the report preface, Johnson writes: “Human rights are not inimical to development and prosperity; the opposite is true. Freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to practice whatever religion you want and live your life as you please, provided you do no harm, are the essential features of a dynamic and open society.”
Index agrees wholeheartedly and acknowledges that the report features many valiant efforts, including, for the first time, a section dedicated to modern slavery – a top priority for the UK government.
But the report – issued on “take out the trash” day, the last of the parliamentary sessions before a seven-week recess – does not, as it claims, seem to aspire to the “passionate advocacy” of Charles James Fox, the British Whig statesman and anti-slavery campaigner.
Instead, Johnson offers a watered-down endorsement of human rights and his department’s understanding of advocacy is seriously flawed. To borrow the foreign secretary’s own words, this is “unthinkable for anyone inspired by the example of Charles James Fox”.
Take Bahrain, for example. While the report does go some way to criticising a handful of the country’s human rights violations, this is not done not in nearly strong enough terms, and you’d be forgiven for thinking these violations are blips in an otherwise rosy picture. This is, after all, a country which has only “restricted some civil liberties”.
“There was a mixed picture on human rights in Bahrain in 2016,” the discussion of the Persian Gulf kingdom begins. “Compared with the region, Bahrain remains progressive in women’s rights, political representation, labour rights, religious tolerance and institutional accountability.”
Firstly, this is a faulty comparison. Looking at the region as a whole serves only to make Bahrain look better than it actually is. Bahrain may have 15% representation of women in parliament, as the report highlights, but this cannot be described as progressive. As of 2014, the government of Saudi Arabia, not known for its feminism, was made up of 19.9% women.
In April 2016, a royal decree that increased the rights of women in Bahrain only passed through parliament scrutiny on a technicality. In March of that year, Bahrain detained human rights activist and blogger Zainab al-Khawaja along with her one-year-old son. She was released in May but fled the country out of fear of re-arrest.
While the report does go on to criticise the dissolving of the country’s main Shia opposition party, Al Wefaq, it remains a mystery why the report would first highlight political representation and religious tolerance as positives in Bahrain.
The country certainly does not have enough institutional accountability, and this is not something it should be commended on.
Even the brief mention of Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, sentenced to two-years in prison just for speaking to journalists 10 days before the government’s report was released, only refers to Index award-winner as having been arrested. The sheer scale of Rajab’s case is not accounted for.
On 3 February a coalition of 21 groups and individuals, including Index on Censorship, urged Johnson to call for Rajab’s release. In the time since, the US state department has called for Rajab’s release and condemned his sentencing. The UK government so far has only “voiced its concern” in the weakest possible terms, and as yet has not acknowledged Rajab’s sentencing.
When Theresa May became prime minister of the UK, Bahrain was one of the first countries she visited. As new documents reveal, UK contractors visited the country 28 times in 12 months amid Bahrain’s ongoing human rights crackdown. In all, “UK government contractors have spent more than 650 days in Bahrain training prison guards, including officers at the notorious Jau prison where death-row inmates are held and allegedly tortured,” the Middle East Eye reported earlier this month.
The UK government appears to be in no position to heap praise on Bahrain for strengthening the rule of law, justice reform, its independent human rights institutions, prisoners’ rights and improvements at Jau.
Many more issues in the Annual Human Rights Report must be scrutinised when MPs return in September. If the Bahrain section is anything to go by, the report should be found to fall far short of being “passionate” about human rights.
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23 Jan 17 | Bahrain, Bahrain News, News and features
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”81222″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]The Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was due to be sentenced on 23 January but this was postponed for an eighth time. Rajab’s ninth trial date on charges of “spreading rumours in wartime,” “insulting a statutory body” and “insulting a neighbouring country” (Saudi Arabia) – all of which are related to comments on Twitter – will be 21 February.
A tweet by Index, which Rajab shared, is being used as evidence against him. He is the winner of a 2012 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for his efforts in speaking out against human rights infringements by Bahraini government in 2011 and was a judge of the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards in 2016.
“Bahrain’s continued judicial harassment of Nabeel Rajab only serves to mar the country’s image in the international community,” Melody Patry, head of advocacy at Index on Censorship, said. “This latest postponement is just more evidence of the Bahraini government’s disregard for global human rights norms. We urge Bahrain to immediately drop all charges against him.”
Rajab was arrested and sentenced in 2012 for voicing his critical opinions about Bahraini authorities and for leading pro-democracy protests. He has since been released and re-arrested multiple times, and his time spent in solitary confinement and unclean conditions have caused a serious decline in his health.
Rajab also faces numerous other charges, including for a letter he wrote to the New York Times in September 2016 and an opinion piece in Le Monde in December 2016.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, said: “Nabeel Rajab faces over 17 years in prison for these pathetic charges. Now the UK is setting a dangerous precedent in providing bombs and jets to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, worth billions, while watching in silence as rights campaigners who took a principled stance against wars and torture are harshly punished.”
There are many who face a similar plight in Bahrain. Although it is considered to be one of the most connected countries in the world in terms of technology, Bahrain has a reputation for regularly blocking critical news, as well as human rights and opposition websites. Social media is strictly monitored and the government routinely revokes the citizenship of many of its critics, rendering them stateless.
Ebrahim Sharif, former secretary-general of the secular, left-wing National Democratic Action Society, was sentenced on 13 November 2016 to a three-year prison sentence for “inciting hatred against the regime” after speaking to the Associated Press.
He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2011 for the same charges. After facing brutal torture and imprisonment in solitary confinement for 56 days, Sharif received a royal pardon on 19 June 2015. He served four years and three months in prison.
Sharif is a member of the Bahrain 13, a group of high-profile human rights advocates who were arrested, tormented and sentenced by a Bahraini military court in 2011.
Many other activists have been jailed for exercising their right to free expression. Zainab Al-Khawaja is currently in exile in Denmark, where she is a dual citizen, with her two young children. They arrived there on 6 June 2016 after she was threatened with new charges that would result in long sentences and separation from her children, following her release a week earlier.
Her father, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, is currently serving a life sentence for the part he played in the 2011 demonstrations in Bahrain. He was head of the 2012 Index Award-winning Bahrain Center for Human Rights with Nabeel Rajab. Al-Khawaja’s sister Maryam is also currently in exile in Denmark.
In 2015, the Liberties and Human Rights Department of Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society verified 1,765 opposition-related arrests. These included the incarceration of 120 children and five women.
On 9 October 2016, sports journalist Faisal Hayyat was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison by a Bahraini criminal court due to a tweet allegedly insulting the Sunni sect of Islam. Hayyat was also arrested in April 2011 for involvement in pro-democracy protests. He wrote on Facebook a few days before his most recent arrest about the extreme physical, psychological and sexual torture he endured while imprisoned.
Writer, blogger and president of the Women’s Petition Committee, Ghada Jamsheer, began her ten-month combined sentence on 15 August 2016. She was jailed in Bahrain for exercising her right to free expression on Twitter. She requested to be freed in order to serve the remainder of her sentences outside of the prison due to her debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, but the judge has yet to inform her of his decision.
On 17 July 2016, the Bahraini Public Prosecution decided to charge Nazeeha Saeed, an award-winning correspondent for Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya and France24, for illegally working for international media. In June 2016 Saeed faced a travel ban without her knowledge, only to discover that she could not leave the country when she wasn’t allowed to board a flight.
Many other journalists working for international media outlets have faced similar threats, including Sayed Ahmed Al-Mousawi, who was stripped of his citizenship in November 2015.
Bahrain continuously stifles free speech and silences critics. It also has the highest prison population per capita in the Middle East, including 3,500 prisoners of conscience.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1485190510938-e7ffcac4-a5c4-10″ taxonomies=”3368″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
15 Dec 16 | Bahrain, Bahrain Statements, Campaigns, Campaigns -- Featured, Statements
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Bahrain’s criminal court today postponed Index Award winner Nabeel Rajab‘s trial to 28 December, when he is expected to be sentenced. The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy spoke to Rajab’s family, who state that today’s trial last 15 minutes, and the judge refused to allow Rajab to speak. Rajab’s pretrial detention, which began with his arrest in June 2016, continues.
The postponement comes a week after British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson courted Gulf leaders in Bahrain, both failing to raise human rights in their public speeches, just days afters an appeals court upheld the 9-year sentence of political opposition chief Sheikh Ali Salman. The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy and Index on Censorship, alongside other partners, have called on the UK to call for Nabeel Rajab’s release.
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy: “This is a farcical trial which represents the human rights crisis facing the Gulf. Bahrain’s allies, in particular the US and UK, must publicly call for his release. In particular, the UK has still not called for his release, nor used its leverage to help this clear human rights violation. Failing to do so will help perpetuate injustice, which undermines any potential long-term stability.”
Husain Abdulla, Executive Director, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain: “Nabeel Rajab’s ongoing trial is a reprisal against both him and the entire human rights community in the region. The US should suspend arms sales to Bahrain. The State Department called for his release, but mere words without leverage has so far proved ineffective. Next steps need to be taken.”
Melody Patry, senior advocacy officer, Index on Censorship: “Bahrain’s repeated postponement of Nabeel Rajab’s trial is emblematic of its wider approach to the human rights of its citizens. Arbitrary trials, extra-judicial detentions and outright stripping of citizenship are the Bahraini government’s favourite weapons to silence dissenting voices. Nabeel’s continuing detention is unjust, cruel and a blatant violation to his right to freedom of expression. We call on Bahraini authorities to release him immediately and unconditionally.”
Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, is being prosecuted on multiple charges of “disseminating false rumours in time of war”, “insulting a neighbouring country” and “insulting a statutory body” under articles 133, 215 and 216 of the penal code. These are in relation to remarks he tweeted and retweeted on Twitter in 2015 about the humanitarian crisis caused by the Saudi-led war in Yemen – with Saudi Arabia the “insulted” country – and documenting torture in Bahrain’s Jau prison. He was first expected to be sentenced in October 2016, but the court instead reopened his case for investigation. In doing so, the court indicated that it had no proof to convict Rajab on, yet refuses to acquit him.
In September, Bahrain’s prosecution brought new charges against him for “undermining the prestige of the state” after the New York Times published his opinion piece, Letter from a Bahraini Jail. This charge could add another year to his sentence. In his letter, Rajab wrote: “No one has been properly held to account for systematic abuses that have affected thousands.” The BCHR estimate around 4000 political prisoners in the country. Rajab also asked: “Is this the kind of ally America wants? The kind that punishes its people for thinking, that prevents its citizens from exercising their basic rights?”
Rajab has been in pre-trial detention since his arrest in June 2016. This extended detention, much of it in solitary confinement, has caused a deterioration in his health, according to his family. The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Non-custodial Measures state that “pre-trial detention shall be used as a means of last resort in criminal proceedings, with due regard for the investigation of the alleged offence and for the protection of society and the victim.”
The US has called for Rajab’s release “full stop”, and the EU’s top human rights official yesterday expressed his “hope” for Rajab’s release. In September, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights used his opening statement at the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council to warn Bahrain: “The past decade has demonstrated repeatedly and with punishing clarity exactly how disastrous the outcomes can be when a Government attempts to smash the voices of its people, instead of serving them.”
The United Kingdom and Bahrain
Pressure mounted this week on the Prime Minister to call for Nabeel Rajab’s release. While Theresa May told parliament at Prime Minister’s Questions this week that “We do raise the issue of human rights when we meet the Gulf states”, the UK Government has never publicly called for the release of any prisoners of conscience in Bahrain.
On Tuesday 14 December, 23 MPs penned a joint letter to the Foreign Secretary calling on the UK Government to demand the “unconditional release” of Nabeel Rajab from prison, and for the charges against him to be dropped. The letter signed by a cross-party group of MPs from the Conservatives, Labour, Scottish National Party, DUP, Liberal Democrats, Green and SDLP, urges the UK Government to follow the lead of the US State Department, the European Parliament, and the United Nations, in calling for Bahrain to release Mr Rajab. The letter said: We urge you, in advance of the trial tomorrow, to make it clear to Bahraini officials that the United Kingdom wishes to see his unconditional release from prison, and for the charges brought against him, which are related to his right to freedom of expression and freedom of speech, to be dropped.
On the same day, rights groups including Index on Censorship and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy protested outside Downing Street and delivered a letter to the Prime Minister.
Theresa May was in Bahrain last week to set out her new “bold vision” for British-Gulf relations. Human rights was not mentioned in her speech to Gulf leaders, nor by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who was also in Bahrain for a separate security conference.
The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy and Index on Censorship, along with three NGOs also wrote a letter to the Prime Minister: “There is nothing bold in silence over clear human rights violations, and we urge you to now make a public call for Nabeel Rajab’s immediate and unconditional release.”
Further information
This is the latest in a long-running series of cases against Rajab. He had previously been arrested and sentenced in 2012 for his expression. Following his release from Jau Prison in 2014, he went on an advocacy tour of Europe, including to London and Brussels, and participated in the 27th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. On 1 October 2014, he returned to Bahrain, where police arrested him at the airport. He was charged and prosecuted for “insulting” the Ministries of Interior and Defence. This was in relation to a tweet he wrote calling these ministries had acted as an “ideological incubator” for terrorist ideologies, after it that Bahraini ISIS recruits had previously worked in these institutions. Rajab was released on bail a month later, but banned from travel – a ban which remains to date.
In January 2015, a Bahraini court sentenced Rajab to six months in prison, and released him on bail while he appealed the conviction. But he was rearrested in April 2015, when he was charged with two of the three charges he was convicted on today: insulting a statutory body and spreading rumours in war time. Rajab remained in police custody until July 2015, when he received a pardon for the six month sentence. However, despite Rajab’s July 2015 pardon, the charges and travel ban continued to be held against him. In his Letter from a Bahraini Jail, he revealed to the New York Times the threats brought against him: “The head of the cybercrimes unit at the Criminal Investigation Directorate in Bahrain summoned me and my family to a meeting, where — in front of my children — he warned me that if I didn’t stop my advocacy work, I would face up to 15 years in prison.”
Rajab was arbitrarily arrested on 13 June 2015, on the opening day of the UN Human Rights Council’s 32nd Session. His arrest coincided with travel bans on activists, the forced exile of Zainab Al-Khawaja under threat of rearrest, and the dissolution of the Al Wefaq political society.
Following this June arrest, Rajab was prosecuted for the two charges first brought in April 2015, with a new third charge of “insulting a neighbouring country” – Saudi Arabia. Tweets used as evidence against Rajab, seen by BIRD, include documentation of torture and retweets of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Index on Censorship messages.
Rajab was held in solitary confinement for the majority of his pre-trial detention, transferred between West and East Riffa Police Stations. After 15 days in solitary, on 28 June 2016 Rajab required urgent medical attention, after losing a lot of weight and developing an irregular heartbeat and immune system deficiencies. He was transferred back to police custody the following day.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1481792118745-8ab3d315-aca2-3″ taxonomies=”3368″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
