The prisoner of conscience Imran Radwan continues his open hunger strike in Al- Rezeen prison

The International Centre for Justice and Human Rights (ICJHR) has learned that the human rights defender Imran Radwan has insisted on continuing his hunger strike by drinking only water and milk in the evening at Al-Rezeen prison. The hunger strike started after he was beaten on Thursday 25 May 2017 along with other political and human rights activists and humiliated and stripped out of all his clothes except a towel to cover his intimate body part. Radwan was also searched in a very degrading manner and all his body parts were deliberately touched by Nepali guards. It can be noted that such search procedure was unnecessary and this “abstract search” is considered, in a conservative society, as a form of sexual harassment and abuse by the Al-Rezeen prison administration, who takes this search procedure as a systematic approach to humiliate political prisoners and violate their privacy.

The humiliating and degrading search of the prisoner of conscience Imran Radwan caused him a psychological shock and a state of depression that made him totally lose his appetite for food and did not care about the doctor's threat to feed him forcefully. He started to take life and death as a commandment so seriously that he even wrote a will as if his death was imminent.

In fact, Imran Radwan insisted on continuing the hunger strike despite his deteriorating health, weight loss, low blood sugar, disorder, and imbalance as a result of the strike.

The International Centre for Justice and Human Rights (ICJHR) asserts that the administration of Al-Rezeen prison and the UAE authorities are responsible for the health and life of the prisoner of conscience Imran Radwan and requests them to transfer him to a hospital specialising in psychological trauma. Transferring prisoners to specialized hospitals is one of the medical services which the prison authorities are obliged to provide to prisoners according to Article 31 of Federal Law No. 43 of 1992 on Regulating Penal Institutions and Article 22 of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

The ICJHR also calls on the administration of Al-Rezeen prison to allow the family of Imran Radwan to visit him without any restrictions on the official dates of the visit according to Article 33 of the Federal Law No. 43 of 1992 on Regulating Penal Institutions.  

Besides, the ICJHR urges the prison doctor to stop threatening to feed Imran Radwan forcefully if he does not discontinue his hunger strike. Indeed, the World Medical Association Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strike (1991) affirms the principle of respecting the will of the hunger striker and the letter of its seventh directive stresses that forced feeding is a form of torture and inhumane treatment.

Source: http://www.ic4jhr.org/en/2014-11-30-18-36-45/media/743-uae-the-prisoner-...