40 days into the hunger strike: Will human conscience be reawakened if they starve to death?

40 days into the hunger strike: Will human conscience be reawakened if they starve to death?

When someone’s dignity is violated and when he is humiliated regardless of his weakness and helplessness while justice is not being served, life itself becomes futile and the whole world becomes hopeless.

Executioners do not usually reach such a degree of fascistic cruelty until they have been stripped of all human values. The oppressed then finds no means to speak up and protest other than by going on a hunger strike. This sums up what has happened to human rights activist, Imran Al-Radwan, whose strike reached its 40th day yesterday.

He would willingly starve to death to stir up the dead human conscience all over the world, which cowardly plunges its head into the sand when one of the rich countries commits such violations and whenever values are being sacrificed for the sake of interests.The state of Al-Radwan’s health has been deteriorating daily, and he is constantly losing weight. He is no longer able to stand; but he proudly stood up to the Nepalese guards who stormed Al-Rezin prison on 25 May particularly.

The inspection was completed in a humiliating manner with prisoners stripped naked with only small towels covering their genitals, which – in such a conservative community – is considered a form of sexual abuse that is extremely humiliating.

This was confirmed by the statements issued by international human rights organisations including the International Centre for Justice and Human Rights which highlighted the violation of the right to privacy and physical and moral integrity and the violation of the regulations which govern prison inspections.

The statements indicated that the Al-Rezin prison administration deliberately placed politicians, bloggers and human rights activists in solitary confinement for no obvious reason other than to humiliate them and prevent them from meeting their visitors. This damaged their psychological and physical wellbeing.

Those who observe this escalating surge in the cruel practices relating to psychological and physical torture will be persuaded that these abuses are an effort to break the detainees’ will and humiliate them. The security apparatus was involved in various types of systematic state terrorism under the pretext of combating imaginary terrorism that tyrants fabricated to justify the repression of opponents.The question that arises here is: Why would the security apparatus get involved in these repressive practices which are intensifying every day? Why would this apparatus continue to make increase the suffering and consequently destroy the country’s social fabric?

With these practices, the security apparatus has become a direct threat to the security and safety of the nation and its people, instead of being a watchful eye that protects them. Was this watchful eye sleeping when the Nepalese guards stripped citizens naked and humiliated them? What happened to the dignity of the nation and its people when its security apparatus forced a UAE citizen to fight with an empty stomach, starving himself to death, as he breaks his vocal cords in the hope of reaching the deaf ears to request the most basic human rights?

Do the people who are in charge of the security apparatus realise that the millions spent in order to promote a false media image of the reality of tolerance in the United Arab Emirates is just money that is thrown into the ocean as long as the state apparatus continues to commit crimes of torture and human rights violations?

We call on all human rights organisations to quickly intervene to save the lives of the innocent, to support the victims of such violations and to bring their voices to the world. The international community must be forced to assume its humanitarian responsibility to preserve the lives of the innocent who have been unjustly arrested and who are subjected to physical violations without serious pressure to bring the criminals to justice.

Human rights violations and the curtailing of all kinds of freedoms are increasing every day and the fascist repressive apparatus is diversifying its methods of psychological and physical torture.

The complicity of the international community and its participation in these crimes against the advocates of democracy and human rights in the UAE has stimulated the security apparatus to exercise more repression and even to export its methods to other countries, as revealed by reports of international human rights organisations such as the scandalous arrests, kidnappings, extrajudicial killings and violent torture in secret prisons run by the UAE in southern Yemen.

If the voices of human rights activists in the West do not rise to condemn the silence of their countries towards these crimes and the involvement of some Western countries in hiding the violations, this silence will remain a disgrace in the history of human civilisation. It will reveal the fragility of human values in the West, the hypocrisy with which Western governments treat rich countries, their double standards relating rights and freedoms, and it will also reveal how they are ready to bargain with human dignity and the future of human life on earth.

 

Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170706-40-days-into-the-hunger-strik...

 

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