Association
On 16th December 2024, 17 human rights organisations marked the passage of 5,000 days of Danish-Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja enduring arbitrary detention in Bahrain. The organisations condemned Bahrain for the arbitrary detention and brutal torture of Mr. Al-Khawaja and called on the King of Bahrain to release him immediately and unconditionally. They also expressed their disappointment that Denmark has failed in its responsibility to secure the release of its citizen for over 13 years.
Human rights groups were disappointed that Bahrain’s King did not release Al-Khawaja, or other human rights defenders, on 15th December 2024, when 896 prisoners were pardoned to mark Bahrain’s National Day.
On 12th December 2024, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) reported that political prisoner Hussein Ali Aman had died due to medical negligence in Jaw prison in Bahrain. Aman was one of the political prisoners who protested the death of other political prisoners in what they described as a slow-death policy.
In November 2024, GCHR reported on the dire conditions at Jaw prison where many political prisoners are held. The deteriorating conditions led to the death of a young political prisoner, Hussein Khalil Ibrahim Kadhim, due to medical negligence in March 2024. Prisoners have since been protesting to demand better conditions and access to their legal rights, to no avail.
Shortly before his death, Aman sent a voice message demanding a stop to the state’s slow-death policy against political prisoners, in which the prison authorities deny many basic rights, including access to adequate and timely medical care.
While protesting his death, prisoners managed to reach the electronic monitoring rooms and obtain many official documents. Other prisoners in different buildings have also joined the protests after the death of Aman, to seek an immediate response from the authorities to their demands. Security forces have since forced them out with few exceptions. Those who managed to call their families reported use of excessive force by the authorities against the protesting prisoners, including beating and deprivation of food for days. They also report that there was no possible negotiation with the authorities around the demands of the prisoners.
Families of the prisoners who were alarmed about the news of deaths and riots were unable to verify the status of their loved ones because prisoners were cut off from communications. Family members organised several protests across the country to demand communications with their imprisoned family members.
Ali Muhanna, the father of one of the protesting prisoners, Hussein Muhanna, couldn’t communicate with his son for 63 days. He then received a call from his son on 8th December 2024, informing him that he was severely beaten along with others by the security forces, who stormed in to end the protests. The father sent several appeals online for the authorities to allow him access to his son and went to the police station to file a complaint, to no avail. Instead, the authorities have summoned him to the Sitra police station and informed him that he is being charged with incitement to protest in front of the police station and joining an unauthorised gathering.