This weekend I had the extraordinary opportunity to meet Maryam al-Khawaja, a Bahraini-Danish human rights defender. Born while her family was in exile in Syria due to her father's decades long struggle for human rights in Bahrain, Maryam came to Denmark when was was two and lived here for twelve years until her family was able to return to Bahrain. Today Maryam is again based in Denmark because her family has been brutally targeted by the Bahraini regime. Her father has been imprisoned and tortured numerous times and remains in prison today along with his brother and daughter, one of Maryam's three sisters. Their life sentences were upheld this September.
Maryam heads the foreign division of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights... she speaks with an incredible passion and conveys the political nuances at play domestically and internationally in Bahrain with insanely articulate ease. The Humanity in Action Senior Fellows network in Denmark (I'm on the board) invited Maryam to come present her work and life's story in an informal lecture setting.
Here's an article that Maryam wrote about the misinformation about Bahrain that is rampant in Western media: Beneath Bahrain's Shia-versus-Sunni narrative, only the tyrants benefit. Maryam poignantly explained how over the past 80 of popular uprisings against repressive Bahraini regimes, the dictators have portrayed the people calling for human dignity and rights as whatever happened to be the international enemy of the day - Marxists, Communists, terrorists, and now Iran-sympathizers. Yes, that wasn't a typo - EIGHTY years of uprisings about every ten years. Today another false narrative paints the uprising as a wild mob of Shia Muslims revolting against a Sunni minority when in fact the revolution in Pearl Square was about demands for freedom, not religious sectarianism.
Maryam's father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, received the Politiken (one of Denmark's largest and most influential newspapers) Freedom Prize this year for his bravery and activism. Anders Jerichow is one of the editors of Politiken as well as the chair of HIA Denmark's board, and so invited HIA Senior Fellows to join the event this afternoon honoring al-Khawaja and sharing his story. I have more to say but... I'm quite sleepy so more soon....
Maryam heads the foreign division of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights... she speaks with an incredible passion and conveys the political nuances at play domestically and internationally in Bahrain with insanely articulate ease. The Humanity in Action Senior Fellows network in Denmark (I'm on the board) invited Maryam to come present her work and life's story in an informal lecture setting.
Here's an article that Maryam wrote about the misinformation about Bahrain that is rampant in Western media: Beneath Bahrain's Shia-versus-Sunni narrative, only the tyrants benefit. Maryam poignantly explained how over the past 80 of popular uprisings against repressive Bahraini regimes, the dictators have portrayed the people calling for human dignity and rights as whatever happened to be the international enemy of the day - Marxists, Communists, terrorists, and now Iran-sympathizers. Yes, that wasn't a typo - EIGHTY years of uprisings about every ten years. Today another false narrative paints the uprising as a wild mob of Shia Muslims revolting against a Sunni minority when in fact the revolution in Pearl Square was about demands for freedom, not religious sectarianism.
Maryam's father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, received the Politiken (one of Denmark's largest and most influential newspapers) Freedom Prize this year for his bravery and activism. Anders Jerichow is one of the editors of Politiken as well as the chair of HIA Denmark's board, and so invited HIA Senior Fellows to join the event this afternoon honoring al-Khawaja and sharing his story. I have more to say but... I'm quite sleepy so more soon....
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