NEW YORK: The Human Rights Watch has called upon the Bahrain government to free 13 high-profile dissidents serving long prison terms solely for exercising their human rights.

The deteriorating health of Abdullhadi al-Khawaja, one of the 13, who began a hunger strike on August 24 to protest his unlawful detention, makes the situation especially urgent,t he watchdog group said on Monday.

Last week the Human Rights Watch and other rights organisations wrote to the 47 countries that signed a joint statement about Bahrain at the United Nations Human Rights Council in June calling for the “release of all persons imprisoned solely for exercising human rights, including human rights defenders, some of whom have been identified as arbitrarily detained according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention”.

The groups urged the 47 countries, in light of the imminent risk to al-Khawaja’s life and in support of human rights and reform in Bahrain, to make public and explicit calls for the immediate release of the 13 protest leaders.

“These men are in jail only because they vigorously called for democratic reforms, an unfair detention that prompted Abdulhadi al-Khawaja to begin his hunger strike,” said Joe Stork deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2014