Joint Appeal to UN Protesting Torture of Detained Rights Defenders in Bahrain

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May 27, 2013 Bahrain
[Bahrain Center for Human Rights logo] [Bahrain Center for Human Rights logo]

Joint Appeal to UN Protesting Torture of Detained Rights Defenders in Bahrain

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following appeal was issued by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and Gulf Center for Human Rights on 22 May 2013.]

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez

UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, Margaret Sekaggya 

UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue 

Dear Special Rapporteurs Mendez, Sekaggya and La Rue,

We the undersigned NGOs worldwide are writing to express serious concern over the treatment of Bahrain human rights defenders whom we believe to be detained in violation of their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. We have received alarming reports of torture and ill-treatment in prison, which contravene Bahrain`s obligations under international law, as well as its promises to stop the practise of torture in detention.

Most recently, Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) and Secretary General of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), was threatened in Jaw prison after he told his wife Sumaya on 14 May 2013 that he had witnessed young political prisoners being tortured by prison guards and called for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit. After two days with no news, Rajab called his wife and colleague to say, "I witnessed by my own eyes a big crime and the government doesn`t want me to talk about it," and then the phone was cut off.

Rajab`s wife was able to visit him on 20 May where he told her that while walking in the prisoners` exercising yard,  he and two other prisoners "heard voices of punching and beating coming out from the prison administration building." Nabeel said he "rushed to the exposed area of the building and saw 7 to 8 young (15 to 18 years old) prisoners who were handcuffed facing the wall, and several foreign non-Bahraini police men were beating them, hitting them with the wall and hitting their heads together. The kids were bleeding heavily." Rajab believes these prisoners have been prevented from seeing their families, and he and the other two witnesses have been threatened to remain silent. Rajab, who is in jail for two years on charges of calling for and peacefully participating in gatherings arbitrarily designated as illegal, has previously been ill-treated in prison and denied medical attention.

We are deeply concerned by repeated reports of torture in detention in Bahrain. Human rights defender Naji Fateel, a Board member of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR), was allegedly tortured in the notorious Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) after his arrest on 2 May. He was charged on 9 May with alleged "establishment of a group in order to disable the provisions of the Constitution" and ordered to be imprisoned for 60 days, then sentenced on 22 May to six months in prison on charges of participating in "illegal gatherings." Among the allegations are that he has been subjected to electrical shocks to his genitals, foot, and back, and been subjected to simulated drowning, severe beatings, threats to publish photographs of his wife,  hanging by his hands from the ceiling, threats to rape him, standing for long hours, and sleep deprivation.

Also on 9 May, the Appeal Court upheld the three-month prison sentence of activist Zainab Al-Khawaja on charges of participating in an “illegal gathering" in November 2011. Al-Khawaja’s new sentence will be added to the one she is currently serving of over three months for "insulting an officer" in a military hospital in Issa Town Prison for women. She is denied family visits for refusing to wear the prison uniform, like her father, human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, jailed for life for his role in protests in the peaceful demonstrations of early 2011.

Zainab Al-Khawaja and activist Ma`suma Sayyid Sharaf were then sentenced on 22 May on charges of "illegal gathering", "inciting hatred against the regime" and a further charge related to the alleged assault of police officers during their arrest in December 2011. A further three months was added to Al-Khawaja`s prison term, and Sharaf was sentenced to six months in prison. Yet there has been no investigation into ill-treatment the two women have suffered during their arrests and detention.

We are also concerned about the well-being and safety of Rayhana Al-Mosawi and Nafeesa Al-Asfoor, detained since they were arrested on 20 April while protesting the ongoing detention of detained human rights defenders including Zainab Al-Khawaja and photojournalist Ahmed Humaidan during the Formula 1 race in Manama. The two women have been denied family visits, and reportedly tortured to extract confessions, one of them with electric shocks. Humaidan also was reportedly tortured in prison after his arrest in December 2012 on charges of "demonstrating illegally."

These latest reports come shortly after Bahraini authorities indefinitely postponed your visit in late April. In November 2011, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) reported that five people detained in connection with protests earlier in 2011 had died as a result of torture in custody and recommended action be taken to prevent torture in detention. Bahraini authorities promised to hold accountable those responsible for torture following recommendations made under the UN`s Universal Periodic Review of Bahrain, yet very little has been done to properly investigate the serious allegations of torture of prisoners by government employees and nothing has been done to effectively prevent torture and other prohibited treatment from continuing.

We therefore call on you to request the Bahraini authorities to:

  1. Guarantee the safety of Nabeel Rajab and the other witnesses to torture in Jaw prison, as well as the safety of the young victims of torture, and allow detained human rights defenders and activists to have phone calls and visits with their families and lawyers;
  2. Release imprisoned human rights defenders Nabeel Rajab, Zainab and Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, and Naji Fateel, as well as photojournalist Ahmed Humaidan, and protestors Rayhana Al-Mosawi and Nafeesa Al-Asfoor, and drop all charges against them, as well as Ma`suma Sayyid Sharaf, as we believe they have been targeted in violation of their rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
  3. Immediately put an end to the practice of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners in Bahrain and bring those responsible to justice; while fixing a new date for the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and a date for the visit of the ICRC;
  4. Guarantee that human rights defenders in Bahrain are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals.

Signed,

Alkarama Foundation
AMAN NETWORK for Rehabilitation and defending Human Rights
Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain
Arab Working Group for Media Monitoring
Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)
Avocats Sans Frontières Network
Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR)
Bahrain Human Rights Observatory  (BHRO)
Bahrain Human Rights Society
Bahrain Press Association (BPA)
Bahrain Rehabilitation and Anti-Violence Organisation (BRAVO)
Bahrain Transparency Society
Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR)
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Committee to Protect Journalists
Democracy Observer Organization in Iraq
Development for People and Nature Association (DPNA), Lebanon
Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR)
Emirates Centre for Human Rights (ECHR)
European-Bahraini Organization for Human Rights (EBOHR) 
Freedom Foundation Yemen
Freedom House
Front Line Defenders
Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR)
Human Rights First Society, Saudi Arabia
Index on Censorship
International Centre for Supporting Rights and Freedoms (ICSRF)
International Media Support (IMS)
International Press Institute (IPI)
Iraqi Journalists Rights Defense Association
Iraqi Network for Social Media (INSM)
Iraqi Streets bloggers
Khiam Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture
Lalya Center for Human Rights 
Lawyers Rights Watch Canada (LRWC)
Maharat Foundation, Lebanon
Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel (I`LAM)
Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI)
Nadim Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence
National Foundation for Efficiencies Iraq
National Lawyers Guild, USA
Norwegian PEN
Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)
PEN American Center
PEN Canada
PEN International Writers in Prison Committee
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Skeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom
Vigilance for Democracy and Civic State, Tunisia
Yemen Organization For Defending Rights & Democratic Freedoms
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412