On Friday 17th August Vice-Chair of the Conservative Party, Rehman Chishti MP for Gillingham & Rainham, visited the the Khalifa regime ambassador Fawaz Al Khalifa at the Bahraini Embassy. He practically side stepped to avoid Ali Mushaima outside the door of the embassy, ignoring the physically frail 17 days hunger striker as he went in to pay homage to his favourite dictator. He tweeted about his meeting with the ambassador.. not once mentioning Ali Mushaima.. as if his life and his fathers life didn't matter.. as if they didn't exist.
Inminds chair Abbas Ali said "Apart from giving arms, and training killers and torturers in Bahrain the UK also provides political cover for the crimes of the Bahraini regime, some of this cover is provided by these 'MPs for cash' who obligingly prostitute themselves to foreign powers for monetary gain. Tory MP Rehman Chishti has been exposed in the past, in the Times newspaper, as being in the pay of the Saudi royal family.. being given £2000 every month by the notorious Saudi ex-secret police chief Prince Turki al-Faisal (via his NGO). Payments followed statements by Chishti in parliament whitewashing Saudi crimes. Since then Chishti has expanded his repertoire by also prostituting to the Bahraini dictatorship in leading a parliamentary group to Bahrain last December, an all expenses paid visit as guests of the brutal dictator.. (metaphorically) stepping over the corpses and destroyed mosques of the persecuted Shia majority to visit a quaint church for a photo op to whitewash Bahrain as a bastion of religious freedom. The Tory party should be ashamed of itself for having such a lackey of a foreign power, a brutal dictator at that, as a vice-chair of their party."
Inminds chair Abbas Ali said "We call for the immediate and unconditional release of Hajer Mansoor and her son Sayed Nizar from the Bahraini regimes dungeons. When a regime punishes a whole family for the peaceful activity of one member it shows the fear and inherent instability at the core of the regime. They know they cannot survive and so in its last pangs of breath they lash out at anyone."
BACKGROUND
Ali Mushaima launched a hunger strike on 1st August 2018 to save his father Hassan Mushaima's life. Ali is demanding his father be given urgently needed medical care, family visits (stopped 18 months ago), and access to books.
Hassan Mushaima is a leader of the 2011 mass movement that peacefully called for human rights and democratic reforms in Bahrain. The Khalifa dictatorship using British weapons and training, along with Saudi invading forces, brutally crushed the demonstrations, killing dozens and caging thousands. In March 2017 Hassan Mushaima along with other human rights defenders and opposition leaders were abducted, brutally tortured and given life sentences in mock trials simply for calling for democracy in Bahrain. Hassan Mushaima was horrifically tortured in Bahrain's notorious Jau prison that left him in need of surgery four times.
UK COMPLICITY
The British government is deeply complicit in every aspect of the suffering of the Bahraini people, including Hassan Mushaima. Since the protests began in 2011, the UK has provided the Bahraini dictatorship with over £83 million worth of weapons with which to crush the people.
Further more, it has provided training. After repeated denials by the UK government it was finally revealed that having gained experience of repressing protests in Northern Ireland, the British government has used that experience to train the Bahraini security forces in the tactics of ruthlessly crushing protests, use of attack dogs, cannons, and how to gather intelligence on protestors. To hide the training the UK government has cynically described it as 'protection of human rights training'. Documents reveal that the British government has provided 863 days of training to Bahraini prison guards and officials, including training 400 guards at Bahrain’s infamous Jau Prison where Hassan Mushaima was tortured. That training in the UK was paid for by the British tax payer.
Another prisoner who was tortured at the British trained Jau Prison was teenager Ali al-Singace. He was abducted by the Bahraini police and severally tortured with electric shocks, and raped. The torture continues for two months at Jau Prison. He was forced to make a false confession for which he was executed by firing squad in January 2017.
A week after the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix in April 2017, Bahraini female activist Najah Ahmed Yousif was arrested for her social media post criticising the holding of F1 Grand Prix in Bahrain. She was tortured at Muharraq Police Station for four days, 8 hours at a time. In her own words Najah describes the ordeal:
“If I wrote down the violations I was subjected to, it would be a book. They insulted my honour and dignity, they physically assaulted me, removed my headscarf, tried to tear off my clothes, and touched my sexual organs. They threatened me with rape, and threatened to kill or put my sons in prison. All this in the presence of plainclothes officers.”
Najah was told to sign a pre-prepared confession without reading it. When she refused to sign it, Najah was violently beaten, kicked and sexually abused. A thug was specially brought into the police station to frighten her with rape. When she could take no more, she signed and for that she was given a three year sentence in June 2018.
Muharraq Police Station where she was tortured is a beneficiary of the training provided by the UK Foreign Office. In August 2015, Brigadier Fawaz Hassan, the current head of the Muharraq Police Station, received direct training provided by the UK Foreign Office in Belfast.
A month after Najah’s torture, another female human rights activist, Ebtisam Al-Saegh was tortured in the same British trained police station. It was punishment for her testimony at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Upon returning to Bahrain she was arrested and taken to Muharraq Police Station where she was savagely tortured. She was blindfolded and sexually assaulted and threatened with rape if she did not put an end to her human rights activities. She was brutally beaten and had to be rushed to hospital after the interrogation. Al-Sayegh told Amnesty: “The men told me ‘no one can protect you’. They took away my humanity; I was weak prey to them.”
For previous action see:
http://inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10817
FREE HASSAN MUSHAIMA GUERILLA PROJECTION ON BAHRAIN EMBASSY
Article: http://inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10813
Video: https://youtu.be/BfbBRmK-4Tk
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JazakAllah,
Abbas Ali
Inminds Human Rights Group
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