Regarding the detention at UNDP Bahrain of three non-violent Human Rights protesters

Your Excellency Firas Gharaibeh, Deputy Resident Representative at UNDP,

I am writing to express my concern and consternation at the way the peaceful and non-violent protest of three citizens seeking freedom for their loved ones in detention in Bahrain today was handled. I am speaking of Asma Darwish, Sawsam Jawad, and Zainab Alkhawaja. Ms. Alkhawaja’s father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, is an internationally known human rights activist and is the former President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and is currently a member of the International Advisory Network in the Business and Human Rights Resource Center chaired by Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He was taken along with Ms. Alkhawaja’s husband and brother-in-law in a raid by masked men on the night of April 9. He was brutally beaten into unconsciousness in front of his family before being abducted.

When Ms. Alkhawaja and her companions attempted to stage a non-violent sit-in at your office today, you called the Bahrani authorities and turned them over to them. If they are detained, raped, tortured, or murdered, you will be morally and legally responsible.

I want you to know that the whole world is watching. The whole world is watching *you*, your Excellency.

I look forward to your prompt reply.

sincerely,

Henry Edward Hardy
Somerville, MA, USA

UNDP Media Contacts
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Even in Custody, Bahrain Activists Use Twitter to Protest
Bahrain frees three women arrested for protesting at UN offices in Manama
Bahrain women arrested in sit-in released, says UN

Copyright © 2011 Henry Edward Hardy

To: The Syrian Ambassador to the United States of America, His Excellency Imad Moustapha

To: The Syrian Ambassador to the United States of America, His Excellency Imad Moustapha

Your Excellency,

It was with great interest that I read your recent blog post “On Woe and Sorrow or How to Dispel Sadness,” dedicated “to the martyrs of Daraa.”

I would submit for your consideration that avoiding and preventing sorrows is superior to any means of dispelling them.

It is to this end that I urgently implore you to use all means necessary to insure the safe release of the writer Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari.

She wrote this recently:

“We went up north and helped spread sparks, in the cities of the plain and by the banks of the Orontes; we listened and we carried messages. Some were sent beyond this land, others were carried here in turn. And we heard people talking of frustration; we’ve been pushing so long, they said, and they kill us and we just die… Why not take matters in our own hands and let them know? Take up the guns which are buried, uses bombs and make revolutionary justice.

I for one pushed back against that; we want a new Syria, a break from all that’s come before. If we take power by killing and torturing, if we make summary justice and examples of Them, how are we different?”

Please take immediate action to free Amina and all who are detained or imprisoned for their beliefs and expression.

sincerely,

Henry Edward Hardy
Somerville, MA, USA