Abdulhadi al-Khawaja (left) and Mohamed Habib al-Muqdad.
© Bahrain Centre for human rights/Wikimedia and Private
For over 15 years, Danish human rights defender Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and Swedish activist Mohamed Habib al-Muqdad have been languishing in Bahrain’s prisons, as their governments and the European Union (EU) have failed to secure their release from unjust detention. As the EU launched negotiations for a “Strategic Partnership Agreement” with Bahrain in July, it should use them to ensure that al-Khawaja, al-Muqdad and others unjustly jailed can finally be free and reunite with their families.
Al-Khawaja and al-Muqdad have been jailed since the Bahraini government brutally cracked down on the 2011 “Arab spring” mass protests. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2012 found al-Khawaja’s detention to be arbitrary and urged his release. He’s among the hundreds the repressive Gulf government has unjustly jailed for exercising peaceful expression of dissent. Authorities have also intensified their repression in recent months, carrying out widespread arrests of people exercising their freedom of expression, and stripping dozens of Bahrainis of nationality, including children.
Although Bahrain’s king has issued mass pardons, including for prisoners held on political grounds, the two EU citizens have always been kept off of those lists, along with other prominent jailed critics, such as opposition leaders Hassan Mushaima and Sheikh Ali Salman, and academic Abduljalil al-Singace.
But instead of resorting to more robust diplomatic measures or targeted sanctions, the EU insisted on “silent diplomacy” with Bahrain, relegating concerns to fruitless human rights dialogues and to ineffective mentions of the country at the UN Human Rights Council. Despite Bahrain’s abysmal human rights record, the EU has chosen it as the first
