SECULARISM IS A WOMEN’S ISSUE
A call from the international network
Secularism Is A Women’s Issue (SIAWI)
To the authorities in Bahrain
and to Member-States of the European Union
April 15, 2012
The network Secularism Is A Women’s Issue demands the immediate release of human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, detained and tortured, sentenced to life imprisonment in total disregard of his fundamental right to freedom of expression, on hunger strike for more than two months, and now risking death. His death in detention would be an assassination which the authorities of Bahrain would be entirely responsible for.
Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, aged 50, has dual citizenship from Denmark and Bahrain. Today, April 15, he has been on hunger strike for 65 days, as this is the only means left to him to protest the numerous violations of his rights since his arrest, in jail, in court and even in the military hospital where he was transfered on April 3 and where he is now detained.
His human rights defender record is impeccable:
Persecuted for his opinion in Bahrain, he spent twelve years in Denmark, from March 1989 to June 2001, ’with (his) wife and four brave daughters’, as he reminds the Danish Foreign Minister in an open lettere dated February 14; this is where he was trained as a human rights defender and how he acquired Danish citizenship. He subsequently became the Director of the Bahrain Human Rights Organisation ( BHRO) based in Copenhagen. From 2002 to 2008, he was the Director of the Bahrein Center for Human Rights, and from August 2008 to February 2011, he was the MENA regional field coordinator for Frontline, the international foundation for the protection of human rights defenders based in Dublin, Ireland.
As women, we give special consideration to the fact that Abdulhadi A-Khawaja is also a women’s rights defender. Both his daughters, Zainab and Maryam, are activists in human rights organisations, both are presently persecuted by the authorities, one facing numerous arrests, the other now in exile. This testifies to the high standard of universal humanist values their father raised them in.
SIAWI for more
(Thanks to Harsh Kapoor of SACW)