The undersigned human rights associations express their solidarity with the families of thousands of prisoners and prisoners of conscience and with activists held without trial in Arab prisons. These prisons are highly overcrowded and the minimum standards in the field of health care are lacking more often, at a crucial time, which requires a lot of vigilance, prevention and medical care to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic ( Covid-19) in Arab countries.
The signatory associations call on the international organizations, including the World Health Organization and the conscience of the world, to support the demands of these families, aimed at quickly putting an end to the unjust and harmful imprisonment, to health. of their daughters and sons and to protect them against this deadly epidemic.
They draw attention to the progressive deterioration of public health services and the growing exodus of medical professionals, which Arab societies have unfortunately known for decades.
They also condemn the arrest by the Egyptian police, on Wednesday March 18, near the headquarters of the Egyptian Council of Ministers in Cairo, of Professor Leila Soueif, mother of the Egyptian activist Ala Abdelfattah, in preventive detention for six months. , his daughter Mona Seif, his sister, the novelist Ahdaf Soueif and the professor Rabab Al Mahdi. These women have been arrested, for demonstrating by holding up signs, demanding the libération prisoners detained in penitentiary establishments threatened by the corona epidemic.
Laila Soueif also underlined, in a letter sent on March 16 to the Egyptian Attorney General, asking for the release of prisoners of conscience, including her son Ala Abdelfattah, that "the only effective way to reduce the risk of seeing the centers detention centers to become places for the spread of the pandemic […] is to release as many prisoners as possible ”.
According to information disseminated by human rights activists and the media, Ahmed Zefzafi, the father of Nasser Zefzafi, the leader of the Hirak du Rif who shook Morocco in 2016 and 2017, sentenced to 20 years in prison, following a trial described by Arab and international human rights organizations as unjust, confirmed last week, during a solidarity meeting with the detainees of Hirak that his son and many detainees had been on hunger strike for more than three weeks, due to the deterioration of their conditions of detention.
The same sources added that the committee of solidarity with the detainees of Hirak, which organized this meeting in Rabat, had blamed in a press release "the general delegation of prisons in Morocco and other official institutions concerned with life and health of hunger strikers, for their behavior, particularly in these difficult circumstances linked to the spread of the coronavirus ”. The committee asserted that these circumstances necessitated the immediate release of all prisoners of conscience and political detainees in Morocco.
The undersigned associations fear that the despotic Arab governments will persist, in this serious situation caused by the corona epidemic, in their resentment towards the prisoners and prisoners of conscience, remain deaf to the legitimate demands demanding their release and only release a large number of common law prisoners, like the government of Bahrain, which released 1486 prisoners on March 11.
The Gulf Center for Human Rights said in a statement on March 17 that the release did not affect prisoners of conscience and political detainees such as Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, The founding director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the other co-founding director Nabil Rajab.
The aforementioned center also noticed that prisons in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Syria and Iran were overcrowded and that hygiene, clean water and decent medical care made the most of them. time default.
The signatory organizations
- Tunisian Women's Association for Development Research
- Tunisian Association for the Defense of Individual Freedoms
- Tunisian Association for the Defense of University Values
- Tunisian Association of Democratic Women
- Vigilance Association for Democracy and the Civic State
- Tunis Center for Press Freedom
- Tunisian Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty
- Committee for the Respect of Freedoms and Human Rights in Tunisia
- Ahmed Tlili Foundation for Democratic Culture
- The association Perspectives el Amel tounsi
- Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights
- Organization against torture in Tunisia
- Doustourna network
- National Union of Tunisian Journalists
Pour plus d’informations, merci de contacter Taoufik Yacoub:
Phone: (216) 95 037 894
E-mail: tayacoub@yahoo.fr
Dated:
Friday, March 27, 2020