پایگاه خبری تحلیلی شرق سایت خبری تحلیلی شرق Related Articles
Roula al-Saffar, head of the Bahrain Nursing Society and Jalila al-Salman, deputy head of the Bahrain Teachers’ Association, were arrested several months ago for taking part in anti-regime protest rallies, rights group Amnesty International said.
According to the London-based group, the two have been subjected to torture.
The hunger strike “is a desperate attempt to protest against their imprisonment and the way they have been treated,” AFP quoted Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program, as saying on Thursday.
“Amnesty International is concerned that they are being held solely because they took part in protests, in which case they would both be prisoners of conscience who should be released immediately and unconditionally,” Luther added.
It is not clear when the two women began the hunger strike but according to Amnesty these activists stopped eating to protest against their continued detention after a number of anti-government prisoners were released on bail.
Meanwhile, Bahraini authorities have admitted that regime forces attacked a medical center run by the Paris-based Doctors without Borders (MSF) in the capital last week.
The conformation came one day after MSF had criticized the “armed raid” in Manama and condemned the confiscation of their medical equipment and the detention of one of their volunteer workers by Bahraini police.
Bahrain’s health ministry, however, claimed that police attacked the medical center because it was ”unlicensed.”
MSF says, since the beginning of anti-regime protests in Bahrain in mid-February, it has treated hundreds of injured protesters who had feared being arrested if they had visited a government hospital.
This is not the first condemnation of Bahrain’s Al Khalifa regime by the international community for attacking and arresting medical staff during crackdowns on anti-regime protesters.
Both the United Nations Human Rights office and Amnesty International have criticized the Al Khalifa regime for its violent crackdown and arrest of peaceful protesters as well as medical staff.
On May 14, Richard Sollom of Physicians for Human Rights told Press TV that the Bahraini regime is systematically targeting doctors because they possess evidence that the Bahraini government’s crackdown on protesters has been extremely heavy-handed.