Bahrain Center for Human Rights

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Re: Call for urgent intervention: Zainab Alkhawaja, Asma Darwish and Sawsan Jawad arrested

3 women, Zainab Alkhawaja, Asma Darwish and Sawsan Jawad were arrested today after staging a sit in at the United Nations office in Bahrain.
This was posted on Twitter by the Ministry of Interior: "legal action being taken against 3 ladies who refused to leave the United Nations building according to requests by officials in the building" They are being held on the charge of illegally being on private property. A picture of the three ladies: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=163063417092342&set=a.144605752271442.32286.144547425610608&type=1&theater. Inside the UN:

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As stated by the MOI of Bahrain, the request was made by the UN staff and therefore the UN office is directly responsible for the safety and well being of these three women.

For more information please read below.

This is a call for urgent intervention, especially by the United Nations.

Zainab Alkhawaja, daughter of arrested prominent Human Rights activist AbdulHadi Alkhawaja and sister of human rights activist Mariam Alkhawaja, has been arrested along with two other female Bahrainis. She and two other women, Asma Darwish (brother detained) and Sawsan Jawad (father detained), went to the UN and staged a "sit-down", delivering a letter to Ban Ki-Moon (http://byshr.org/?p=602). They met with a deputy manager, and expressed their concerns, and urged that the UN must take immediate action. Zainab Alkhawaja and the two other women said they would stay until the UN brings justice to the political prisoners of Bahrain.

Today is the 12th day since Asma Darwish started her hungerstrike, and yet she went to protest in the UN building.

The first official from the UN told the three women: "you cannot stay. If u do ull make problems for u, for us and maybe even ur families" The UNDP, Mohd Ahmed, insisted that their voices have been heard and he continued to scare them by saying you "should leave because anyone here could easily say that you were here with guns trying to take over the building." Zainab said "he repeated three times that there might be the issue of people saying we violently seized the UN building." The UN then allowed the police force to enter the room where Zainab Alkhawaja and the two other women were and forced them out. They are now in the hands of the police and we are very concern of their well-being and safety.
Zainab's last words on twitter: "Wow how great are the UN, they let police in to take us"

This is the statement by the Ministry of Interior saying:

Following a tip-off by Bahrain-based UN office, legal measures have been taken today against three women who entered the UN premises after the official work time and refused to leave when asked to do so, the Director General of the Capital Governorate Police Directorate said.

A police report has been written about the incident which is considered as a crime punishable by the law, he added.
http://www.bna.bh/portal/en/news/460948

via bahraincenter.blogspot.com