BCHR | Bahrain: BCHR President, Nabeel Rajab, Denied Adequate Medical
 

24-04-13 11:15 AM

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Photo: Rajab, pictured above, after an attack from the security forces in 2005

24 April 2013


The Bahrain Center for Human Rights express grave concern over the health of the imprisoned human rights defender and the president of the BCHR, Nabeel Rajab, and the lack of adequate medical care provided to him.
According to information received from Rajab’s wife, he is suffering from severe back pain that is so severe that at times he is unable to move. Requests to take him to hospital to be examined by a specialist had been refused. He was instead instructed by prison authorities to exercise and he was given a tablet for the pain.
In 2005, Human rights defender Nabeel Rajab was brutally attacked by the private security forces, while he was supporting a protest of unemployed Bahraini people. He sustained several contusions, bruises, back injuries, a fracture to one finger, and scratches on the head and across his body as a result of the of beating by police batons. He was treated in the hospital for more than 10 days. (see: http://www.bahrainrights.org/ref05090601). He has continued to suffer from back pain through the years since this incident.
Nabeel Rajab is currently serving a 2 year prison sentence at the central prison of Bahrain (Jaw) since 9 July 2012 after he was sentenced for participating and calling to peaceful assemblies to demand rights and democracy in a trial lacking the most basic elements of fairness.

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Photo:Rajab being arrested in 2005. No officers have been held accountable for the abuse Nabeel received during his arrest.


The denial of adequate medical treatment for Rajab follows a long list of harassments and attacks on the human rights defender, which have increased in the past two years in order to pressure him to completely stop his human rights activism. He was attacked personally by slander campaigns through the official state television and radio channels, pro-government newspapers and some daily columnists who were allowed to write about Mr. Rajab without any legal or moral obligations. His house was raided after midnight by the security forces and armed men during the national safety period in 2011 and on two different incidents his home was attacked with tear gas during the night, which put his family at risk. He was interrogated multiple times, including by the military prosecution. From May 2012, he was subjected to repeated legal harassments when five cases were brought against him. On 9 July 2012, a court issued a 3-year prison sentence against him on charges related to freedom of expression, which was later reduced to 2 years. It was reported to the BCHR that the Rajab has received ill treatment during his detention, including arbitrary solitary confinement, he was housed in a cell with dead animals, subjected to repeated strip-searches and other intentionally humiliating searches. Currently, Rajab is being detained in isolation from the rest of the political prisoners, and with a non-Bahraini, non-Arabic speaking cellmate.
The BCHR believes that the denial of adequate medical treatment for the human rights defender is an act of revenge against the outspoken defender who has worked to document human rights abuses perpetrated by the government. Rajab continues to send calls of support for the human rights of the Bahraini people, even from behind bars.

The BCHR calls for the immediate release of leading human rights defender Nabeel Rajab as well as all other detained human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience in Bahrain. The government of Bahrain is responsible for any deterioration on his health condition due to the lack of adequate medical treatment at the prison.


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