Blog
Published on September 12, 2014
Anyone who’s met Maryam Al-Khawaja knows she’s amazing.
In 2012, Maryam accepted the Baldwin Medal of Liberty at our annual human rights Summit on behalf of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights for outstanding work publicizing the human rights abuses taking place in Bahrain following the 2011 uprising. And she hasn’t stopped her inspiring work. She’s crisscrossed the globe, from Switzerland to Cambodia, Turkey to Morocco, Peru to lreland – to mobilize support for democracy in Bahrain.
But now she’s in jail.
When returning to Bahrain to try and visit her father in prison—also a leading human rights defender, who recently launched a hunger strike—Maryam was arrested at the airport and thrown in jail on trumped-up charges.
She has not been allowed to visit or speak to her father and began a hunger strike today in solidarity.
Various human rights figures from across the world have issued strong statements in her support, but at this point it’s unclear what the regime will do. Her next hearing is set for Tuesday September 16th.
Take a few minutes to watch her inspiring words from her acceptance speech below.
“You can imprison the revolutionary, but you cannot imprison the revolution.”
Human rights defenders like Maryam are the reason we do what we do at Human Rights First. The next Human Rights Summit will be held on December 9-10, 2014 in Washington, D.C.
