Those detained for adhering to professional duties or exercising basic freedoms must also be released

PHR Calls on Government of Bahrain to Release Abdulhadi al-Khawaja
6 April, 2012 – Physicans for Human Rights

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) calls for the immediate release of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a Bahraini human rights defender and democracy activist who reportedly faces death after a nearly two-month long hunger strike.

Al-Khawaja was arrested one year ago in the wake of popular protests against the Bahraini government and was sentenced to life in prison. While in detention, al-Khawaja allegedly suffered torture and severe ill-treatment.

To protest his ongoing detention and mistreatment, al-Khawaja began a hunger strike on February 8. His health is rapidly deteriorating, and his family reports that his life is in danger. PHR calls on the Government of Bahrain to immediately release Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, allow an impartial investigation of allegations of torture and ill-treatment during his detention, and hold all perpetrators of torture accountable for their actions.

PHR remains concerned about individuals in Bahrain, including medical professionals and democracy advocates, who continue to face detention conditions and abuse similar to that suffered by al-Khawaja.

A group of twenty medical professionals who were arrested, detained, and sentenced to long prison terms for providing medical care to protesters reported torture in detention. These allegations were confirmed through independent evaluations by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI).

While most of the medical professionals arrested and charged following the protests are now released from detention pending an ongoing trial, three other medics are currently serving two to three year sentences.

PHR calls on the Government of Bahrain to immediately release the three medics, Hassan Matooq, Younis Ashoori, and Ahmed Ali Al Moshatat, and all others who are imprisoned for adhering to professional duties or exercising basic freedoms.

In response to international pressure, the US Administration has withheld a $53 million arms sale to Bahrain; however the Administration continues to deliver smaller amounts of military assistance to Bahrain.

The Administration should take a stronger public stance against the ongoing detention of Al-Khawaja and other prisoners of conscience by publicly demanding their immediate release. The United States should also call on Bahraini authorities to establish independent and efficient mechanisms to investigate allegations of torture and ill-treatment in detention, as demanded in the report of the BICI. …more

The Pearl’s Pillars
by Maryam Al-Khawaja

Five arms stretched from the ground
Each palm embraced the pure limp bodies in shrouds

Their reflection was a wide glow in the dark night

Shining down on the peaceful crowds
Five arms stretched from the ground
Each palm held a cry of “Allahu Akbar”
Held a revolutionary song
Held a poem of defiance
Held a scream for freedom

Five arms stretched from the ground
Palms covered with a grave of flowers
Fingertips pointing towards the heavens
A mother’s tears celebrating a wedding’s last hours

Five arms came down with vengeance
But heroes stood their ground
Flowers in hand
Bullets were the only answer they found

She stood there
Flag held high
The red splattered blood on the earth
As the remaining white screamed “I am peaceful!”

Five arms stood no more
Like the fresh buds of spring
Arms emerged from every futile earth
Rising above lands
Diseased with money and power

The red seeped through the earth
With the cries of the martyrs’ children
The ground shook
And the throne broke
King came down on his knees
In the air echoed the crown prince’s pleas

“I promise you words
Words worth your blood
Come now, don’t delay
Come to dialogue I say
Hand in hand
Pull me out from the quicksand
And in this dark hour
Help me stay in power”

The young voice drowned his pleas
Thus into hiding he fleas
“Accountability, accountability,
You have lost your credibility
When your army shot our sons
Using U.S. made guns”

So the tribe caught her
and beat her with knives and swords
Then showered her with stones
As they cried to the world
“Stone her she is sectarian
She eats at Lebanese restaurants
And owns Iranian rugs
Our unarmed tanks she hunts
No we swear those are not our thugs”
And foreign hands played the melody to their cries
As they spread propaganda and lies

Plays of deceit
Created by their playwrights
“You are Shiaa
Every year
We discover and foil your plan
Of overthrowing our clan
In the restaurant you were trained
And the rug in conspiracy we framed
Close down the restaurant
The rugs tear to bits
Quickly quickly
Before they discover our fibs”

Slowly but surely
From beneath the rubble
A fist emerged
“Do what you will
My voice you cannot kill
My land I will never betray
And from the path of righteousness I will not stray
I stand against every foreign intervention
While you invite them to kill and put my people in detention
My determination will not heed
Nor will your plays succeed
For I am not Shiaa
Nor am I Sunni

I am forever only Bahraini!

Letter of love: To my dear family…

Abdulhadi al-Khawaj

Bahraini hunger striker casts a long shadow over claims of reform
Patrick Cockburn – 6 April, 2012 – The Independent

As the government in Manama prepares to welcome back Formula One, activists say human rights abuses continue

Bahrain’s best known human rights activist, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is on the 57th day of a hunger strike, could die in jail at any moment say those who have seen him recently.

“His heart could stop at any time or he could slip into a coma,” said his daughter Maryam. Mr al-Khawaja, 51, who was sentenced to life in jail last year for an alleged plot to overthrow the Bahraini monarchy, says he will continue his hunger strike until he is freed or he dies.

His death is likely to ignite violence in Bahrain where members of the majority Shia community have protested against his imprisonment. It would also discredit the attempt by the Bahraini government to persuade the international community it is seriously pursuing legal and constitutional reforms.

The detention of Mr al-Khawaja, has lead to calls for the cancellation of the Bahrain Formula One race later this month. The government has been publicising the race as a sign that Bahrainis are united and the situation on the island Kingdom has returned to normal. “They are using it as a celebration that we are one nation while people are being killed weekly,” says Zaynab, another daughter of Mr al-Khawaja.

Mary Lawlor of the human rights group Front Line Defenders, who led a team on a three-day visit to Bahrain this week, said: “I don’t see how the Formula One can go ahead if Abdulhadi al-Khawaja dies in jail.” She said she had asked him to end his fast, but he refused. “He has lost 25 per cent of his body-weight and he was already a thin man,” she said. …more

Received Approx. 8:00PM EST 5 April, 2012 USA

[email header redacted]

Hello,

I apologize for the mass email, but time is of the essence. I am
sending the follow appeal on behalf of BCHR, GCHR, and CIHRS. Maryam Alkhawaja is currently [redacted], poise as always, trying everything in her power to secure her fathers release. Yesterday the family was informed that Abdulhadi his pulse is so weak he may go into cardiac arrest or a coma at any moment. And just a little while ago, Zainab AlKhawaja was also arrested. We were panic stricken when we first heard that her sister was standing in front of the prison screaming “baba”. As updates on the situation have come in, our hearts stop with every ping of Maryam’s phone. Zainab has since began a hunger strike in protest of her fathers continued detention. I implore you to take action to save a Alkhawaja’s life.

Best,

[email footer redacted]

Iran’s Revolution and the Global Politics of Resistance
5 April 2012 – By Vinay Lal – truthout

Book Review – The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future edited by Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel

In the euphoria over the “Arab Spring”, which has brought revolutions to the doorsteps of autocratic regimes that only last year seemed unflappable in their resolve to keep the aspirations of their peoples suppressed, it becomes imperative to recall that the first sustained signs of change in west Asia in recent years appeared in Iran. The Arab world seemed so firmly in the grip of monarchs and dictators, many of them bolstered by the United States (US), which has been in the business of exporting the rhetoric of electoral democracy to the world but has feared reform and revolution at every turn, that no one expected the people to take to the streets in millions. And how people have stormed the streets, facing police barricades, braving tear gas and baton charges – and not just in the Arab world! The Arab spring turned into a long summer of discontent, as signs of protest began to appear in other parts of the world, in Athens, Rome, Madrid, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere. As these lines are being written, the Occupy Wall Street movement has even brought dissenters and rebels to the fore in the US, where politics for far too long has been reduced to an exercise of choosing between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Yet, all this was anticipated in Iran’s dramatic political upheaval in June 2009, the outcome of which, perhaps contrary to received opinion, is far from settled.

Road to Revolution

Though nearly everything in Iran is marked by the watershed events of 1979 that led to the ouster of the Shah and the assumption of power by the Ayatollahs, it is possible that some years from now the phrase, “after the revolution”, will resonate with an altogether different meaning. The burden of the present collection of essays, The People Reloaded, which brings together the reflections of some 50 scholars, activists, and observers of contemporary Iranian society, is to suggest that we may be in the midst of another momentous upheaval in Iran’s 30 years after the revolution which replaced the dictatorship of the Shah with the rule of a theocratic elite. Some of the contributors take a long-term view of Iranians’ “bloody and painful march towards democracy” (p 27), commencing with the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and the coup, engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British military intelligence, of 1953, which led to the deposition of the nationalist hero Mohammed Mossadegh; others hearken back to the Shah’s despotism and the political skill with which Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters orchestrated his removal; and yet others set their sights resolutely on the mammoth protests against the “stolen election” of 2009. But all the contributors are clearly animated by one central question, aptly reflected in the book’s subtitle, “The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future”: how might political action in Iran continue to be steered in directions that would help to secure a future for the country’s citizens that allows for the fulfilment of legitimate political aspirations, the free pursuit of one’s livelihood, economic security, and some commonly agreed upon conception of human dignity?

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This is an urgent appeal to save the life of prominent human rights defender Abdulhadi Alkhawaja. His lawyer Mohammed AlJishi released this picture today which he took in the hospital yesterday. His wife was told that his pulse is so weak he may go into cardiac arrest at any minute. Time is short and Abdulhadi Alkhawaja may die at any time.

BAHRAIN PRO-DEMOCRACY UPRISING TARGETS WASHINGTON: Hungerstrike Activist Nears Death
by Finian Cunningham – Global Research – 4 April, 2012

Tensions between the US-backed regime in Bahrain and pro-democracy protesters are reaching incendiary levels as the life of a prominent human rights activist on hungerstrike hangs perilously in the balance.

For more than a year, largely peaceful rallies have persisted in Bahrain despite a brutal crackdown by Saudi-backed forces. Now, demonstrations in solidarity with imprisoned hungerstriker Abdulhadi Al Khawaja are occurring on a daily basis in villages and towns across the Persian Gulf kingdom – defying intensified state repression.

And the Bahraini uprising, led mainly by the 70 per cent Shia population, is increasingly strident in its calls for the downfall of the unelected Sunni monarchy. The prospect for some kind of compromise leading to a constitutional monarchy – a “settlement” being pushed by Washington – is now viewed as anathema, well past its sell-by date.

Paradoxically, the conflict, chaos and blinding tear gas on the streets seems to be clarifying for the Bahraini people what needs to be done to achieve their democratic freedom.

Furthermore, anger is mounting towards the US government, which is seen more and more as the political guarantor of despotic rule by the Al Khalifa monarchy.

Significantly, in response to Bahraini security force violence and the tin ear of the island’s ruling dynasty, protesters appear to be resorting to violence as their last-resort means of political expression, with youths throwing petrol bombs and barricading off streets with burning vehicles and tyres.

Last week, US deputy ambassador Stephanie Williams posed for state-controlled Bahraini media as she visited riot police in hospital who had been injured (allegedly) during protests. Her visit only served to inflame further protests as Bahrainis point out that Williams has not shown any public concern for the many thousands more victims of state violence – even though there has been an upsurge in deaths among protesters in recent weeks from riot police firing live rounds and tear gas indiscriminately at crowds and into homes.

More than 70 people have been killed over the past year by Saudi-backed regime forces while thousands have been wounded and incarcerated – huge figures proportionate to the island’s tiny indigenous population of less than 600,000.

The invasion of Bahrain by Saudi and other Gulf forces to crush civilian protesters was secretly given the green light last March by Washington (and London). Days before the murderous crackdown, deputy ambassador Williams was photographed in another fawning media set-piece handing out doughnuts to Bahraini protesters who had staged a rally outside the US embassy in Manama.

Not so long ago, it seems, the US could carry off its deceptive pose as a benevolent soft power behind the regime. Not any more.

Heightening the tensions is the harrowing fate of Abdulhadi Al Khawaja (52) who is reported verging on coma after 56 days of refusing food.
…more