Bahrain under pressure to release prisoners, Saudis oppress detainees
The khalifi regime has been under intense pressure to release native political prisoners as it marks its national day on 16th December. Amnesty International and others has repeated calls to end this saga and set more than 1500 prisoners of conscience free. The issue of the political prisoners has become a test of will between the people and the regime. Daily protests in several towns and villages calling for the immediate and unconditional release of their children has continued for three months. As they mark the Martyrs Day on 17th December, the khalifis and their backers are losing the moral and political grounds and are expected to raise the white flag, admit their defeat and leave the political scene. Fundamental political change is the ultimate goal of natives.
Worrying reports have been circulating in recent days that Dr Abduljalil AlSingace has been refusing his IV for over two weeks and has stopped taking supplementary diet. This is in protest against the decision by the khalifis to arbitrarily suspend his weekly video calls to his family, as a punishment for his hunger strike. As a result, Dr Abduljalil AlSingace has lost more weight, appearing more fragile and pale than he had been before. His sugar levels remain dangerously low, and his physique much weaker.
The case of Dr Al Singace and other political prisoners has become central to the protest outside the Bahrain Embassy in London by Ali Mushaima who had launched his hunger strike on 15th November. Several MPs, journalists, human rights and political activists have been visiting him daily and issuing statements of support to the cause of the Bahraini people. On 13th December Charlie Flanagan, Chair of Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence at the Irish Parliament tweeted his support to Ali Mushaima. He said: “Today I stand in solidarity with @AMushaima protesting outside Embassy of Bahrain in London seeking the release of Dr Abduljalil Al-Singace & his father Hassan Mushaima. Please visit him if nearby & show your support for his relentless efforts.” Yesterday, Bredon O’Hara, MP (SNP) put a question to the FCDO on the issue: “On what recent dates the Government has raised the case of Dr Abduljalil AlSingace with authorities in Bahrain regarding (a) Dr AlSingace’s ongoing hunger strike and his demands for his confiscated research to be given to his family and (b) his immediate and unconditional release from prison?” Forty MPs have signed a Parliamentary an Early Day Motion (EDM) calling for the release of the opposition leader Hassan Mushaima from Bahrain’s jail. If you are in the UK, Please write to your MP and urge them to sign it.
The death of a prominent lamenter outside Bahrain has re-opened one of the deep wounds of the Bahraini people, Sayed Amir Al Mousawi died in Iran as a result of health complications coupled with the psychological pressures of forceful banishment. On Thursday 1st February 2018 he was forcibly taken to the airport, together with wife, Maryam and two brothers, Sayed Mohammad Ali and Sayed Abdul Nabi to the airport and forced to board a plane to take them into exile. His sudden demise re-ignited the debate on the khalifi policy of exiling natives who had committed no punishable crime. Three days earlier (29th January) Adnan Kamal and Habib Darwish had also been banished. The day before (28th January) Isma’il Darwish and his brother Ibrahim had also been banished. The deportees are among 31 native Bahrainis whose nationality had been revoked by the khalifis in the first week of November 2012.
Loujain al-Hathloul, the prominent Saudi women’s rights activist, has filed a lawsuit against three former US intelligence and military officers who have admitted in a US court to helping carry out hacking operations on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. In her lawsuit, which was filed in a US district court in Oregon in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hathloul alleged that the actions of three men – Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke – led to her iPhone being hacked and communication being exfiltrated by UAE security officials. The hacking ultimately led, the lawsuit alleges, to Hathloul’s arrest from the UAE and rendition to Saudi Arabia, where she was detained, imprisoned and tortured.
A Saudi national, Saud Al Sarhan has been in forced disappearance since the end of October. His place of detention or reasons for his arrest are not known. He had published an analytical article on the future of the Saudi economy under the notorious killer, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).
The Saudi human rights NGO, ALQST has said that the life of a prisoner of conscience is being put at risk, with Ibrahim Mohammed Ha’il al-Yamani having been moved to a cell with four “takfiris” who have threatened several times to kill him. A “takfiri” is someone who believes it lawful to kill any Muslim they consider guilty of apostasy. Islamic scholar Ibrahim al-Yamani was arrested in September 2017, during the same wave of arrests that swept up prominent cleric Salman al-Odah, Islamic scholar Dr Hassan Farhan al-Maliki and dozens of others.
Bahrain Freedom Movement
15th December 2021