An Emirati court has sentenced Saleh al-Owaissi, a 29-year-old Omani man, to three years in prison and a fine of Dh50,000, for allegedly “disseminating information with a view to ridicule and damage the reputation of the state symbols” on WhatsApp. The authorities also claim that al-Owaissi “ridiculed Emirati martyrs in Yemen” by referring to them[…]
02
Mar
Mar
March 2016 – Geneva, Switzerland – Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), the European Center for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR), and Justice Human Rights Organization (JHRO) would like to take this opportunity to respond to the[…]
01
Mar
Mar
Bahrain UN Special Procedures release Joint Communications Report for HRC31 The Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council released the 13th iteration of their joint communications report on Thursday, February 25, 2016, documenting allegations of human rights abuses from around the world. In the most recent edition of the report, the Special[…]
29
Feb
Feb
Oman jailed two social media users this month for posts they made on Facebook and Twitter. First, an Omani court sentenced Hassan al-Basham, a former diplomat, to three months in prison on charges of “insulting God and the country’s leader,” Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said. The charges are related to a series of posts on[…]
29
Feb
Feb
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), Freedom Now, Amnesty International, English PEN, PEN International, and Split this Rock held demonstrations on Thursday, 25 February, in London and Washington to call for the release of Mohammed al-Ajami, a Qatari poet who has been imprisoned since 2011. Qatari authorities arrested al-Ajami in November of[…]
