political prisoners

BAHRAIN: ‘Had there been civic freedoms, the authorities would have known of the deep suffering at Jau Prison’
CIVICUS speaks about the situation of political prisoners on hunger strike in Bahrain withJawad Fairooz, founder and director of Salam for Democracy and Human Rights (Salam DHR).

Founded in 2012, Salam DHR is a human rights civil society organisation (CSO) registered in France, Switzerland and the UK. It undertakes research and advocacy for the advancement of democracy and human rights, mainly in relation to Bahrain, but also in the wider Gulf and Middle East and North Africa regions.

Maryam al-Khawaja, daughter of imprisoned human rights defender Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, intends to return to Bahrain imminently to ensure her father gets medical treatment and press for his immediate and unconditional release. Yet she, too, faces possible arrest. What’s your assessment of the situation?

Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, 62, a dual Danish-Bahraini citizen, is the co-founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and has a long history of activism. He was arrested by the government of Bahrain in 2004, 2007 and again amid mass unrest in April 2011. After this he faced a grossly unfair trial before a military court, including on charges of ‘seeking to overthrow the government’. He was tortured in pretrial custody and since his arbitrary imprisonment he has been repeatedly denied access to adequate healthcare.

On 9 August he joined some 800 other hunger strikers. They called for an end to lockdown policies that require them to spend up to 23 hours of the day in their cells, the suspension of solitary confinement, the opportunity for collective or congregational prayer in Jau Prison’s mosque, face-to-face meeting rights with family members without a glass screen and access to healthcare commensurate with that available to the public, among other improvements in prison conditions.

On 13 September the mass hunger strike ended with the authorities reportedly meeting many of these demands. This came as Bahrain’s Crown Prince visited Washington, DC, where he met with senior members of the Biden administration: the problem had to go away.

Maryam nevertheless intends to travel and she has our full support. We continue to call for Abdulhadi’s immediate and unconditional release. The Danish and European Union (EU) authorities must do more.

What is at the core of this problem is the absence of civic space in Bahrain. If there was space for independent civil society, then CSOs would have effectively alerted the authorities to prison conditions and they could have addressed the situation. An independent civic space makes it possible to find a balance in government conduct.

What does this mean for Maryam al-Khawaja and our courageous colleagues travelling with her? It means they should be allowed to enter Bahrain and make their demands. The government should engage with them in a spirit of transparency. The absolute worst that could happen is for dissent to be tolerated just a little bit more. While this seems unlikely to happen, it is what the government should do. We wish them all Godspeed.

How is it possible to conduct human rights activism in such a closed environment? How does Salam DHR do it?

Bahrain has closed civic space. Government officials decide which CSOs can be registered and who can stand for their boards. They prevent people from engaging in public life who have no criminal records or public complaints but rather perhaps a past association with a political movement or party that was unfairly banned years ago.

The Bahraini constitution provides for freedoms and safeguards similar to many other states, but the reality is that the government continues to carry out arbitrary arrests and stage unfair trials for acts that are not internationally recognised as crimes. The authorities torture detainees and use the death penalty, despite domestic opposition and international condemnation. They have stripped hundreds, including myself, of citizenship, depriving us of even the right to have rights in our homeland. They use the digital space to monitor and punish dissent and to foment religious and sectarian strife.

Activists linked with Salam DHR cannot, in effect, exercise their right to peaceful assembly, let alone openly campaign for freedoms of association and expression, the release of prisoners unfairly tried and imprisoned or a moratorium on the death penalty. They would risk arrest if they did that.

Yet engaging in civic activism is not totally impossible, only very challenging. Alongside CIVICUS and other partners, Salam DHR engages with allies and like-minded activists as well as the few CSOs that openly but cautiously raise human rights concerns so that the wider Bahraini society hears our message. We echo and amplify their appeals.

We are a catalyst: we help Bahraini activists access platforms to reach domestic and international audiences and provide training and development opportunities such as internships. Alone and in partnership with others, we research, document and publicise developments, grounding our message in article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity to take part in the conduct of public affairs.

How useful for advocacy purposes was theglobal event held by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, in March 2023?

It was mixed: Danish parliamentarians and those from other countries addressed human rights issues and the absence of an independent civic space. The IPU’s human rights team raised concerns about freedom of expression and violations against Bahraini parliamentarians. But despite the IPU’s affiliated status with the United Nations (UN), the government still denied access to independent observers and human rights organisations, denying them either visas or access and turning at least one around at the airport. This was the authorities once again restricting civic space.

A few days before the IPU meeting officially began, Bahraini lawyer and activist Ebrahim Al-Mannai called for parliamentary reforms on social media. He and three others who shared his post were arrested for publishing material that could ‘disturb public order’.

At the event itself, the government appeared uninterested in seriously engaging with visiting parliamentarians on human rights issues, despite attempts from the Danish delegation and representatives from Finland, Iceland and Ireland. Our message is clear: open up civic space, free up CSOs and political parties and liberate discourse, otherwise the cycle of political unrest will continue.

Reports indicate that the mass hunger strike in Jau Prison has ended. What’s your assessment of this episode?

The painful August 2023 mass hunger strike was wholly avoidable. It happened mainly due to the government’s stubborn and short-sighted refusal to allow civic space to exist even to a minimum degree. Had there been freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, they would have known of the deep suffering at Jau Prison. If you don’t let people say what they think, then public life can only lurch from crisis to crisis.

The hunger strike was the expression of the accumulation of a number of factors that have been present in Bahraini prisons for years and it was based on grievances that have been repeatedly expressed: prison conditions and ill treatment of prisoners amounting to torture. The abuses worsened and conditions deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, medical neglect resulted in the deaths of two prisoners, Hussein Barakat and Abbas Mallalah.

We appeal once more to the authorities to allow for the opening of civic space and provide a social vent to end the cycle of human rights crises we face.

Is the international community doing all it can to support the struggle for democracy and human rights in Bahrain?

International human rights organisations, UN treaty bodies and Special Procedures and partner states, for instance in the context of the UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review process of Bahrain, have all joined us in calling on the government of Bahrain to abide by its international human rights obligations, starting with the basic step of letting people have a voice in public life.

Today, 15 September, is International Day of Democracy, and we are joining the UN in calling on the government of Bahrain to empower the next generation by ensuring that their voices are included in the decisions that will have a profound impact on their world. In his address, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that ‘walls are closing in on civic spaces’. Those walls are also the walls of Jau Prison, where it took 800 detainees’ unjust suffering for the government to even take notice.

But the UN has also let neighbouring United Arab Emirates, which is as closed as Bahrain, host the forthcoming COP28 climate change summit. Lack of civic space means there can be no activism for climate justice in Bahrain – for instance, no public demands for accountability can be expressed over costly and environmentally damaging land reclamation in Bahrain’s northeast, which has already eroded the livelihood of fishing communities. We need to be able to address these challenges openly, with a rights-based approach, to avoid a future calamity.

And powerful states that could be putting some pressure for change are avoiding the issue. Right now, Bahrain’s Crown Prince is wrapping up meetings with senior Biden administration officials, none of whom appear to have raised civic space concerns or addressed the needless suffering of 800 Bahraini prisoners. The UK has removed Bahrain from its list of ‘countries of concern’ at the same time as it trumpeted a billion-dollar Bahraini investment in the UK. In October the EU will recommence its cycle of so-called human rights dialogues.

The international community’s inexplicable complacency over the festering human rights quagmire in Bahrain will further embolden the government in crushing civic space. Many leaders miss the point when it comes to Bahrain and its Gulf neighbours: they appear to accept the facade of what is presented as pragmatic autocracy and appear to accept regional rulers’ colonial-mindset contention that democracy will destabilise the region.

Democracies have in fact produced the most stable, enduring and dynamic systems in the world. Human rights and democracy are essential for Bahrain and its neighbours because their deficits continue to be the primary cause of resentment and unrest. A security-based approach does not remedy these problems. Bahrain’s history has shown these methods to be a failure, as it has endured continuous waves of mass unrest followed by violent crackdowns.

Authoritarianism and the forms of violence it fosters are the real destabilising forces, a cycle that can only be broken through the recognition and enactment of democratic rights. The first step towards this goal is simply letting civic space exist.

Civic space in Bahrain is rated ‘closed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

Get in touch with Salam for Democracy and Human Rights through itswebsite and follow @SALAM_DHR and@JawadFairooz on Twitter.
Cambodia: A year on, the persecution of human rights defender Rong Chhun and other activists continue

CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, calls on the Cambodian authorities to drop the baseless charges against trade union activist and human rights defender Rong Chhun and to release him immediately and unconditionally. One year on from his arrest, his ongoing persecution highlights the unrelenting government repression against activists in the country and his ongoing detention during a pandemic is putting his life at risk.

Rong Chhun, the President of the independent Cambodian Confederation of Unions and a member of the Cambodia Watchdog Council, was arrested on 31 July 2020. He has been a vocal human rights defender and has long raised concerns about the plight of farmers’ and workers’ rights.

Chhun was charged with incitement under Article 495 of Cambodia’s Penal Code after he advocated for the land rights of villagers living near the Cambodia-Vietnam border. He was jailed at Prey Sar Prison and his trial began in January 2021. He has been denied bail amid an unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak in Cambodia’s prisons.

“The authorities must drop the politically-motivated charges that have been brought against Rong Chhun. Speaking up for local communities should never be a crime. The persecution against him exemplifies the systematic weaponization of the courts by the Hun Sen regime to target activists and silence all forms of dissent,” said Lisa Majumdar, CIVICUS Advocacy Officer.

Rong Chhun’s arrest last year sparked a wave of arrests in relation to planned protests to demand his release. Many of the activists arrested remain in detention and have also been denied bail. They include Hun Vannak, Chhoeun Daravy, Tha Lavy, Koet Saray, and Eng Malai (aka So Metta), who are members of Khmer Thavrak and Sar Kanika a former activist for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Others detained include Muong Sopheak and Mean Prommony, member and Vice-President of the Khmer Student Intelligent League Association (KSILA).

“It is extremely disturbing that activists in Cambodia have been denied bail despite calls by the UN to decongest prisons and release political prisoners during the pandemic. Holding them at this time poses a serious risk to their lives - and adds another layer of punishment for these activists. The international community must do more to stand side by side with Cambodia civil society and demand their release,” said Lisa Majumdar.

Research undertaken by the CIVICUS Monitor shows that laws are routinely misused in Cambodia to restrict civic freedoms, undermine and weaken civil society, and criminalize individual’s exercise of their right to freedom of expression. Human rights defenders, civil society activists and journalists are often subject to judicial harassment and legal action. They have also been ongoing police ill-treatment against the families and relatives of detained activists from the banned Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) who have been holding protests.

Civic space in Cambodia is rated as ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
EGYPT: ‘We are dealing with an extremely elaborate, very creative repressive machinery’
CIVICUS speaks with Egyptian activist Mona Seif about the international campaign for the release of her brother, British-Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abdel Fattah, ahead of the COP27 climate summit taking place in Egypt in November. Alaa played a leading role in the protests that led to the downfall of former dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011, but since President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi came to power in 2014, he has spent most of the time in prison or police detention. He has been jailed since December 2021 on a five-year sentence for sharing a Facebook post denouncing abuses against imprisoned activists. Following the 2011 uprisings Mona has been part of the No Military Trials for Civilians Group. Alaa and Mona’s father, Ahmed Seif El-Islam, is also a prominent human rights lawyer.

What is Alaa’s situation in prison?

He’s been denied both a British consular visit and his lawyer’s visits. So on 2 April he went on a hunger strike in protest.

It has been nearly 200 days now. To sustain his strike this long, he has been ingesting around 100 to 150 calories per day. Last time I saw him, before I travelled outside Egypt in June, he had already lost a lot of weight and looked quite frail. When I visited him again more recently it shocked me. I had never seen him so weak, so emaciated. He has become a skeleton with a lucid mind.

As his demands are still not being addressed, he is considering going back to a full hunger strike, when he relied only on water and salts. That means his health may deteriorate much faster.

What are his demands?

Alaa’s demands have evolved since he first went on his hunger strike. In the early days, he requested an independent judge to investigate all the human rights violations he had endured since September 2019, which our family reported.

Alaa has been systematically deprived of his basic rights as a prisoner, and while in the Tora maximum-security prison he witnessed horrific crimes. He saw officers preventing detainees accessing any kind of medical care and saw inmates dying after calling for help for hours.

As a British citizen, he demanded access to the British consulate and his lawyers in the UK. He waited for this to happen for four months before he started a hunger strike.

In a recent family visit, Alaa handed my mother and sister a new list of demands concerning the situation of all prisoners and political prisoners, arguing that there is no room for ‘individual salvation’. He now demands the release of all those detained or imprisoned in national state security detention facilities and headquarters after exceeding the two-year maximum pretrial detention period, as well as all people imprisoned for expressing their ideas, convicted for political reasons, or tried by emergency courts.

What tactics are the Egyptian regime using to silence dissent?

We are dealing with an extremely elaborate repressive machinery, which is very creative in coming up with new tactics of repression and shifting them when necessary.

For instance, between 2013 and 2015 the government mostly dug up old assembly laws and used them to crush protests. Since 2015 there has been a steep rise in enforced disappearances: people are simply kidnapped and disappeared, possibly kept in a military-run detention facility. We continue to lack sufficient information about these sites. Then there was a wave of prosecution of protesters on terrorism charges.

Since 2019 people have been increasingly detained on state security accusations, with detention being renewed over and over without detainees being referred to the courts for as long as the government sees fit. They are doing what we now call ‘recycling’ detainees: people are kept in detention for some time, then released but soon slapped again with the exact same charges – but as there is now a new case against them, they press the reset button and keep them for yet another period of preventive or pretrial detention.

How have international allies helped raise human rights issues?

International civil society is our main lifeline. Most of the media platforms are blocked in Egypt. Many lawyers have been harassed and targeted, and some are in prison. A lot of human rights defenders have been pushed into exile, or are continuously threatened and harassed, or have been thrown in prison. So it is increasingly hard to find someone who will speak up on our behalf.

The few civil society organisations that are still operating domestically, and definitely international organisations based abroad, are the main channels through which the families of prisoners and other people in Egypt can voice their concerns, call for help, try to gather some attention and put on some pressure to at least try to alleviate some of the abuses.

Over the past two years, we have increasingly relied not just on international organisations abroad, but also on the Egyptian diaspora. Within their capacity, those who have had to leave Egypt try to bring attention to what is happening in the country.

But we must bear in mind the regime also harasses Egyptians living abroad, often through retaliation against family members who remain in the country. Egyptian embassies in some countries, such as Germany, are complicit with state security services. They send people to harass activists and report on them, so many are afraid of participating publicly in peaceful protests.

We have relied on allied civil society organisations for reporting purposes. The number of rights violations and crimes committed on a weekly basis is enormous, and tactics of repression shift so much that it is sometimes hard to keep up.

I experienced all these changes in tactics first-hand, as a sister of a detainee. But keeping up and documenting everything is overwhelming. Most people doing human rights work in Egypt are burnt out and exhausted. This has been going on for years and everyone has dealt with trauma in one form or another.

How do you view the Egyptian government’s initiative to release some political prisoners ahead of COP27?

The Egyptian regime has released only 500 detainees over the past few months. But there are tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt.

The recent releases are part of the regime’s international public relations strategy in response to concerns expressed by the international community about the deteriorating human rights situation. The authorities claim they are opening a new chapter in its relationship with domestic civil society, the opposition and the international community.

But this is far from the truth. They are not willing to do the bare minimum. Alaa’s case makes clear that the regime is not serious about resolving the situation of political prisoners. Alaa continues to be denied his basic rights both as an Egyptian and a British citizen. I’m worried this may continue up until a point the damage will be irreversible.

If such a high-profile prisoner is subjected to these kinds of human rights violations, including torture, one can only imagine what is happening to other prisoners without Alaa’s support and visibility. I think the release of a few people is the best we can hope for.

Needless to say, no one is being held accountable for the torture or ill-treatment of prisoners. Since 2019 the General Prosecutor has not addressed any complaints concerning the situation in prisons. Whenever a particularly serious human rights violation gets some attention, the PR machinery sets in motion to smear the detainees and their families. And for most families, the focus is on stopping ongoing violations that endanger the lives of their loved ones rather than holding perpetrators accountable. In the long run, it will be a problem that we are all so focused on trying to save as many people from this prison system as possible that nobody is paying enough attention to seeking proper justice and accountability.

Do you think COP27 will provide an opportunity for international solidarity with Egyptian civil society?

The reality is that most governments don’t care what the ruling regime is doing in Egypt. They are willing to turn a blind eye to El-Sisi’s atrocities because he fits into regional arrangements and is easily brought into mega business deals and arms deals that involve a lot of money. Who cares how big a debt he is accumulating on the shoulders of Egyptian people.

This makes it much harder for people working on documenting and exposing the regime’s crimes to try to stop them. At the end of the day, business deals sustain the facade of mutual respect between western governments and the Egyptian government.

The Egyptian government is increasingly aware and taking advantage of the fact that it can get away with so many crimes as long as it keeps satisfying the economic interests of France, Germany, the UK and the USA.

This is all working very well in the run-up to COP27, which the Egyptian regime is clearly using as a whitewashing PR stunt. In doing this, they are being assisted not just by the Gulf countries, which was to be expected, but by many western governments. Despite the recent talk of the USA withholding some of its military aid, if you look at it, the reality is that El-Sisi is getting all the support he needs.

All we can do about this is what we are already doing, which is try as much as possible to make enough noise to bring attention to the crimes and rights violations the Egyptian regime does not want the world to know about. This may come at an extremely high price, but it is what it is. This is the reality of living in Egypt in 2022, under El-Sisi’s rule.

Civic space in Egypt is rated ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.

Follow @Monasosh and @FreedomForAlaaon Twitter and sign this petition for Alaa’s release.
Letter to UK Foreign Secretary on Salma al-Shehab
CIVICUS and other civil society organisations call on Rt Hon James Cleverly to address the treatment of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia who have been imprisoned for expressing themselves.
Nicaragua: CIVICUS welcomes release of political prisoners but calls for lifting of all restrictions to civic space
Global civil society alliance, CIVICUS welcomes the release of 222 political prisoners who had been detained and convicted under trumped-up charges by Nicaraguan authorities. Their release is a step in the right direction, and should be followed by the lifting of other restrictions on civic space. While we are relieved for those who have been released and for their families, we remain concerned about the 38 political prisoners who continue to be held in degrading conditions in the country’s penitentiary system.
Nicaragua: Growing human rights violations require UN scrutiny to continue
UN Human Rights Council – Intersessional Activity

Interactive Dialogue on the interim oral update by the High Commissioner on the human rights situation in Nicaragua

🇳🇮#SOSNicaragua: Nos preocupa el creciente número de desplazados forzosos y los + de 240 presos políticos recluidos en condiciones degradantes y tratados cruelmente en las cárceles del país.
¡Pedimos urgentemente la libertad de todxs lxs presxs políticxs! https://t.co/07AZzoF28z pic.twitter.com/mBpfAoBcSV
— CIVICUS Español (@CIVICUSespanol) December 15, 2022

Delivered by Amaru Ruiz Aleman, Asociación Red Local

I make this statement on behalf of the Asociación Red Local, a member of the Nicaraguan Platform of NGO Networks.

We express our concern about the situation of the more than 240 political prisoners who are being held in degrading conditions and receive cruel treatment in various prisons in the country.

In the recent municipal elections, the Ortega government secured control of the 153 municipalities of the country in an arbitrary and non-transparent manner, thus restricting the civil and political rights of Nicaraguan citizens.

Due to the various human rights violations, more than 150,000 Nicaraguans are living in exile without being able to return to Nicaragua and more than 3206 civil society organisations and 55 media outlets have been shut down in a concerted effort by the Nicaraguan government to eliminate all dissenting voices.

We call on the members of the Council to support and strengthen the resolution on Nicaragua at the March 2023 Human Rights Council session to give continuity to the efforts of the Group of Experts and to the monitoring mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, paying special attention to the restrictions of civic space, the conditions of political prisoners and the situation of forcibly displaced families.

Freedom for all political prisoners in Nicaragua!

Civic space in Nicaragua is rated as "Closed" by the CIVICUS Monitor