Al Khawaja Should Be Released, Not Force Fed

Al Khawaja Should Be Released, Not Force Fed
2 May, 2012 – By Brian Dooley – Human Rights First

Sadly, Bahrain is looking more and more like Northern Ireland of the late 1960s, when the government there refused to reform. As a result peaceful pro-democracy protestors, frustrated by the lack of progress, were tempted to react to police violence with violence of their own.

I’ve noted the similarities between Irish and Bahraini political history before. This week reports emerged that prominent Bahraini human rights defender and political prisoner Abdulhadi Al Khawaja is being force-fed after almost three months on a hunger strike. (In 1917 the British authorities made a terrible mistake by force feeding an Irish political prisoner, Thomas Ashe, killing him in the process and triggering a fresh wave of recruits into the revolutionary movement.)

Last year, Al Khawaja was sentenced to life in prison after being arrested, tortured and given an unfair trial in a military court after he took part in the pro-democracy protest. He is best known internationally for his human rights activism (including as a staff member for Front Line Defenders, a human rights NGO based in Dublin). On Sunday, after a week of rumors that he had died, the authorities allowed his family to visit him. His daughter Maryam tweeted that “he had been drugged, tied to the bed, forcibly fed with a nasoenteric tube.” A nasoentric tube is one that is pushed up through the nose and into the stomach. It was the use of a nasoenteric tube that killed Thomas Ashe. The Bahrain authorities deny feeding Abdulhadi against his will, although the BBC reported yesterday that Abdulhadi told them he had been force-fed. …more