Bahrain Centre for Human Rights accept the Advocacy Award, which recognises campaigners or activists who have fought repression, or have struggled to challenge political climates and perceptions
The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) has played a crucial role in documenting human rights violations, political repression and torture in the gulf kingdom. Despite efforts to silence and discredit it, the BCHR has kept international attention on the brutal government crackdown that began last February. It has prevented the Bahrain government from whitewashing its international image, and at times when news media were severely restricted and foreign journalists barred, it acted as a crucial source of alternative news.
Former BCHR president Abdulhady Al Khawaja is one of eight activists serving life sentences for peacefully protesting at the now-demolished Pearl Roundabout. Like many other activists he claims he has been tortured in prison. It is widely reported that BCHR employees regularly experience threats, violence and harassment. In January 2012, BCHR president Nabeel Rajab was severely beaten by security forces while peacefully protesting.
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Last year, a number of students from Bahrain Polytechnic were expelled from the university for “participating in unlicensed gatherings and marches”. Targeting anti-government students, evidence for the expulsions was mostly obtained from social media websites such as Facebook.
21 year-old Asma Darwish was among the 63 students expelled from the university in June 2011, after encouraging people to participate in unauthorised marches against the regime. In a subsequent interrogation from a committee of members from Bahrain Polytechnic and the Ministry of Interior, Darwish was shown Facebook activities that the committee had obtained from her account, including status updates and comments.
After an external review of the cases, 32 of those, including Darwish, were allowed to return to Bahrain Polytechnic, but following her return, she was repeatedly harassed and threatened by fellow students, forcing her to leave Bahrain and flee to Switzerland.
Darwish described initially being excited about her return to the university in late September 2011, but soon became aware that things were not going to be easy.
Upon her return, she was asked to sign a code of conduct saying she would not get involved in activities with a political nature, and recalls discussing the code with an employee whose responsibility it was to obtain signatures from the returning students.
She said: “I went through a discussion with her regarding some of the points in the code, she had no answers except “this is the law in Bahrain, we must follow the constitution. I told her several times that the constitution was the problem.”
Darwish was forced to re-sit courses she had been expelled from, and asked to pay her tuition fees again. She soon noticed that students were behaving differently around her.
“I went to my classes, and I saw many students staring at me. In the four months that I was on the polytechnic campus before I had to leave Bahrain, I was harassed more than once by some of the students who were loyal to the regime. Students would sing pro-government songs when they saw me passing.”
She described one occasion when a fellow student began chanting “we shall die for you Abu Ali”, referring to Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman, known as Abu Ali. On a different occasion, Darwish recalls another student staring at her until she was out of sight.
“I have always ignored these situations. But I was fed up of the polluted atmosphere that was not anything near an educational one. I decided to take my chance and report the harassment though I knew it was risky.”
Reporting the case sparked many concerns. Darwish explained it became apparent that the pro-government students who had been involved in her harassment could have her arrested, purely on the basis of her differing political views. She was determined to take her case further, despite the risks.
But it was not just through concern for herself that she progressed the case. Not alone in receiving harassment, Darwish wanted to help others who were being affected by similar treatment.
“So many other excellent, talented and creative students face difficulties learning in such an environment. Most of them don’t even enjoy studying at the Polytechnic after all they have gone through. Many are still harassed.”
Very few of the students report the cases of harassment: “Most of the students felt unsafe to come forward and report a case, saying “I prefer being harassed in campus than arrested and harassed in prison for reporting a case against a pro-government”.
She added: “The students who stand for democracy not only at Bahrain polytechnic, but other universities like the University of Bahrain are facing hardship getting the knowledge and education they deserve. Those students are being constantly targeted by the regime, through arrests, torture, and lack of appreciation and respect.
To this day, Darwish has not heard back from Bahrain Polytechnic on her case. Students who are disrupting the learning of others are still on campus, but she hopes that those who are being harassed will speak out. She advised students to write and talk about their harassment. “Your voice shall be heard,” she said.
Despite being forced to leave Bahrain in January 2012 and seek asylum in Switzerland, she was still subjected to phonecalls, threatening her with arrest, rape and murder. She cannot go back to Bahrain any time soon for fear of being persecuted.
“I left everything there and fled. I left my family, my friends and a country that I am in love with. I wanted to be a change maker, maybe I couldn’t while I was in Bahrain. But I promise that I will do my best to see the smile on the faces of my people in Bahrain once again.”
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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
