AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Bahrain's most prominent Shia cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim called for supporting political prisoners in the country who have gone on hunger strike.
Sheikh Qassim said backing them is obligatory for all people at all levels, the Bahrain Mirror daily reported.
The prisoners have made sacrifices on the path of freedom and that is why they are in jail now, he stated.
The cleric added that the noble inmates who have been jailed for their efforts to restore the oppressed people’s rights and political demands, should regain their inalienable rights, including the right to freedom.
He went on to say that all the restrictions imposed on political prisoners in Bahrain must be removed as they violate their religious, human and legal rights.
The remarks come as hundreds of Bahraini political prisoners are taking part in a hunger strike to protest ill-treatment and hard conditions at the country’s notorious Jau prison.
Five prison blocks at Jau started their hunger strike last week.
In a statement published by Bahrain’s main opposition group, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the prisoners said they started the hunger strike over prison officials blocking inmates from worshipping and 23-hour lockdowns daily.
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The statement further said prison officials put inmates in isolation arbitrarily, interfered with family visits and provided inadequate healthcare to those imprisoned. Inmates are also barred from accessing education.
“Our demands are not trifles, but very necessary and required for human life, even at the lowest levels known to human history,” the prisoners’ statement read.
The hunger strike embodies the prisoners’ insistence on fundamental rights and dignity, and is a reminder that rights cannot be neglected, the statement said.
The prisoners put the number of those taking part in the strike in the hundreds.
Human rights organizations have warned against ‘inhumane conditions’ at Jau prison, saying various forms of physical and mental torture as well as mistreatment are among the torments that prisoners endure in the detention center.
Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Middle East-based 5th Fleet, is in the midst of a decade-long crackdown on all dissent after the 2011 popular uprising.
Since Bahrain put down the pro-democracy protests with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it has imprisoned activists, deported others, stripped hundreds of their citizenship and closed its leading independent newspaper.
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