Watch the Alternative Human Rights Expo III and call for the release of imprisoned human rights defenders
5/12/2024
As we approach International Human Rights Defenders Day on 09 December 2024, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) asks supporters to watch the recording of the third Alternative Human Rights Expo, held online on 27 November 2024, with the support of over two dozen partners, and amplify our calls to release human rights defenders (HRDs) persecuted in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by showcasing the work of detained HRDs, WHRDs and activists, as well as artists, poets, writers and musicians from the MENA region with a focus on human rights.
There was a generous amount of solidarity between participants, some of whom had been imprisoned or persecuted, or have family members in prison in Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and with the people of Palestine and Lebanon.
The event opened with music by multi-generational Arab women’s drum and vocal ensemble Tabiba, made up of world music artists based in Canada who are from Palestine, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. Tabiba, which mixes the colours of their voices, traditions and inspirations to make music medicine, performed “Marhaba” (“Hello”).
“Today’s event is not an entertainment event; it is rather of a cathartic and awareness-raising nature; we are aiming to show the reality of the human rights defenders we work with,” said GCHR’s Executive Director Khalid Ibrahim, who co-hosted the event.
Co-host Marwa Fatafta, Access Now’s MENA Policy and Advocacy Director, added, “This event is not an entertainment show but a sober reminder of the gruesome reality which human rights defenders, artists, journalists, and dissidents in the MENA region are actively working to change. For this purpose, I was tasked with laying the landscape by giving a regional overview – and I cannot but start with the heart-wrenching situation in Gaza, described as ‘hell on earth,’ ‘children’s graveyard,’ ‘an apocalypse,’ and a place where all international norms and rules have vanished.”
Fatafta then gave a regional MENA overview. She said, “Those of us who are not embroiled in war and genocidal violence are facing the rising tide of authoritarianism across the region, made possible by an arsenal of repressive tools – from the weaponisation of draconian laws such as cybercrime and counter-terrorism laws to detain and prosecute human rights defenders and activists for peacefully exercising their rights, to the use of commercial spyware and surveillance technologies to monitor our communications and activities.”
Taha Alhajji of the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), spoke about four imprisoned WHRDs in Saudi Arabia, including Salma Al-Shehab, Nourah Al-Qahtani, Manahel Al-Otaibi, and Israa Al-Ghomgham, as well as the two imprisoned Wikipedians, Osama Khalid and Ziad Al-Sufyani, who are among the many Saudis imprisoned for decades for online activity. He said, “There are no active human rights organisations working inside Saudi Arabia and their members are either in prison or displaced. The government has practiced extreme pressures on women human rights defenders.” He added, “Sports and cultural events inside Saudi Arabia cannot cover up this dire situation.” The Expo provided an opportunity to feature their cases ahead of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) being held in Saudi Arabia in December 2024.
The event featured art by three of many Palestinian artists who have been killed in Gaza in the past year, Heba Zagout, Fathi Gaben and Mahasen Al-Ktheeb, the artist who created the viral artwork of “We Are Burning” hours before being being killed on 18 October 2024 in Jabalia camp. Fatafta said, “Tragically, the work of artists featured in previous Alternative Human Rights Expos, such as Heba Zagout, has been totally destroyed and lives online only now.” We also showed a painting called “No Words” by artist Malak Mattar, who left her home in Gaza in early October 2023 to study in London. She has also written a children’s book “Sitti’s Bird”, based on her personal experience as a child.
Khalid Ibrahim spoke about GCHR’s Board member, imprisoned Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor, who is serving a combined 25 years in prison in the UAE, and showed a video made by Manu Luksch, and poetry read by Ibrahim. “It is really powerful to see Ahmed speaking and we hope he will be released soon, along with other human rights defenders. We are always hopeful,” he said. The event also featured a video made by the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Centre (EDAC) about imprisoned human rights lawyer Dr. Mohammed Al-Roken, who was sentenced to life in prison in the July 2024 as part of the notorious UAE84 case.
The work of imprisoned Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who is wrongfully being held past the end of his sentence, which ended two months ago, was read by his aunt Ahdaf Soueif, an acclaimed writer. She said, “It’s good to be with you although it is sad that we continue to have to do this year after year, although we are always hopeful that next year things will improve and that some of the people we have spoken about will have won their freedom.” She mentioned that Abd El-Fattah She added, “Today is the 60th day of my sister’s hunger strike, and we’re trying to raise awareness that whatever he’s being punished for, 10 years is enough. We’re trying to get the British government to appeal to their friends in Egypt…. to let him go.”
Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy spoke about the release in April 2024 of 1,500 prisoners, including his brothers-in-law, Sayed Hashem and Sayed Nazar, who had already spent over seven years in prison. “It was a special day and opened a new chapter of real hope,” he said, but “those hopes were diminished” when the Eid pardons did not include Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja or Dr. Abduljalil Al-Singace, who has been on a liquids-only hunger strike since July 2021 to protest the confiscation of the research about Bahraini dialects, written by hand in prison. Alwadaei spoke of the determination of political prisoners such as Dr. Al-Singace and Alaa Abd El-Fattah who resort to hunger strike to amplify their demands.
We also showed a video made by Maryam Al-Khawaja, calling for support for her father as he heads towards 5000 days behind bars. She said, “On 16 December 2024, we will mark the heartbreaking milestone that my father has spent 5000 days in prison for being a human rights defender. What would you have missed if you had spent the last 14 years in prison? My father has been failed by the international community, and especially by the Danish government. He must be released before we hit the 5000 day mark.”
Women’s rights advocate Shiva Nazarahari of Femena showed art and cartoons from WHRD Atena Farghadani, who was sentenced to six years in prison on 10 June 2024 for attempting to hang one of her cartoons near the presidential palace in Tehran. Nazarahari also read a poem, “I Rose Up Again”, by imprisoned Iranian WHRD Mahvash Sabet, with whom she noted that she spent time in prison in 2009. Sabet is currently serving a second 10-year prison sentence.
Umama Hamido, a Lebanese artist and experimental filmmaker based in London, read from her work “My Two Little Boys” about her twins, to whom she wrote, “our roots might be heavy, but you must never experience it as a burden, but rather as a blessing.” Hamido’s work addresses lived and shared experiences of immigration, as she questions our relation to traumatic spaces, how the formation of the self is affected by separation from homeland and the exile’s gaze.
The event closed with a video of “Chbik Nsitini” (Why did you forget me?), a song by Tunisian musician and activist Yasser Jradi, who sadly died in August this year. His video was introduced by his niece Feryel Jradi Charfeddine of HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement, who said, “the song expressed his frustration for what happened with the marginalised people of the country.”
You can find the programme and the videos in English and Arabic on the website at https://www.alternativehrexpo.org/
Viewers are asked to make donations to support the event’s participants and the detained HRDs/WHRDs by donating at /qurium/www.gc4hr.org/support-us.html
Thank you to our partners!
Partners:
- Gulf Centre for Human Rights
- ALQST for Human Rights
- Access Now
- Amnesty International
- Amnesty International Sutton Group
- Amnesty International Westminster & Bayswater
- Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR)
- Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
- Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
- CIVICUS
- Emirates Detainees Advocacy Centre (EDAC)
- European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR)
- FairSquare
- FEMENA
- FIDH
- Free Al-Khawaja Campaign
- Human Rights First
- Human Rights Sentinel
- Human Rights Watch
- HuMENA
- Index on Censorship
- IFEX
- International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
- Maharat Foundation
- PEN America
- Qurium Media Foundation
- SALAM for Democracy and Human Rights
- Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRD-IC)
- World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
