Endangered Scholars Worldwide

Endangered Scholars Worldwide BAHRAIN d r . m a s a u d j a h r o m i , chair of the departm ent of engineering at Ahlia University in Bahrain, was arrested without explanation on April 14,2011, when Bahraini security forces removed him from his bed that evening. According to a report from the Islamic Hum an Rights Commission (IHRC), Jahromi continues to be detained w ithout charge, has no access to a lawyer, and his family remains uninformed of his whereabouts. The chair of the IHRC has publicly expressed concern that Jahromi has been wrongfully imprisoned as part of a larger crackdown on academics that has resulted in indiscriminate arrests ofBahraini citizens without charge. Please help by urging the Bahraini government to encourage free inquiry in its intellectual community and demanding that Jahromi receives due process by asking the government to state publicly the charges against him if he is to continue to be held in detention. a y a t a l -q u a r m e z i , a student at the University of Bahrain, was arrested for reading a poem critical of the governm ent during a pro­ democracy rally, Amnesty International reported on June 12, 2011. She turned herself in to authorities on March 31, 2011, after her brothers received death threats from m asked police officers. She is charged with disrupting security, taking part in illegal protests, and publicly incit­ ing hatred toward the regime. Her poem, w hich she read in February 2011, was a plea to the king o f Bahrain to hear his people’s demands. Al-Quarmezi was allowed no external contact during the first 15 days of her detention. She also has reported that she has been beaten and tortured w ith electrical shocks and has been expelled from her univer­ sity, along w ith hundreds of other student protestors. Information current, to the best of our knowledge, as ofJune 22, 2011. Additional infor­ mation and more current information abut many of these cases may be available on our website at social research Vol. 78 : No. 2 : Summer 2011 v Update On June 22, 2011, d r . a b d u l -j a l il a l -s i n g a c e , professor of engineer­ ing at the University of Bahrain, was sentenced to life im prisonment by a m ilitaiy court on charges of training and financing a terrorist orga­ nization. Al-Singace was sentenced along with 13 other defendants, all of whom were given only restricted access to legal counsel, and whose lawyers were not allowed to be present during the prosecution’s ques­ tioning of the defendants. On April 28, 2011, al-Singace’s son, A ll a b d u l l a h h a s a n a l -s in g a c e , was sentenced to death along with three others by a m ilitary court for their alleged involvement in the m urder of a police officer during protests on March 16, 2011. Human Rights Watch has condemned the trial, w hich lasted less than two weeks, as failing to m eet m inim um standards of due process and the recognition of the defendants’rights. The date of execution has not been announced. Appeals to: His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Fax to: +973 1-753-6343 A1Khalifa Salutation: Your Majesty Prime Minister Ministry of Foreign Affairs A Facebook group has been created in P.O. Box 547 support of Dr. Masaud Jahromi and can Government Road be found at: Manama . BELARUS Update Last issue we featured two students and a lecturer who faced charges of “rioting” and “mass disturbances” following protests over the disputed Belarusian presidential election in December 2011, in which hundreds of protestors were arrested, including 11 students and a lecturer from the European Humanities University (EHU). Since then, all three situa­ tions have evolved, both for better and for worse. The Network for Educational and Academic Rights (NEAR) reports that a l i a k s a n d e r a t r o s h c h a n k a u , an international law student at...