Ahmed Mansur’s health deteriorated after hunger strike

Emirates Leaks’ reliable sources revealed that Ahmed Mansour’s health, the prominent rights activist who has been arbitrarily detained in the UAE for years, seriously deteriorated.

Mansour launched a hunger strike two weeks ago to protest his continued arbitrary detention demanding his freedom.

According to the same sources, Mansour suffers from a severe deterioration in his health and is forced to take painkillers all the time.

The same sources said that Mansour suffers from fatigue, breathing difficulty and inability to walk or sleep for long hours because of the pain of the tumor in his stomach and intestines.

Mansour has been in the hunger strike for more than two weeks in protest against his sentence, poor conditions in UAE prisons, and serious violations of their most basic rights.

According to the available information, Mansour is being held in Sadr City prison in Abu Dhabi and is held incommunicado in solitary confinement.

In addition, the prison conditions are very poor as Mansour is in a cell that lacks a bed and water, and he cannot access to the bathroom.

With this dire situation, Mansour, as he enters a hunger strike, his health condition deteriorated in a mid of fears that he will be abused more and deprived of medical care.

The UAE authorities arrested Mansour on March 20, 2017. He was held for over a year in an unknown location without any contact with a lawyer and received very limited family visits.

On 30 May Mansoor was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of one million dirhams ($272,000), three years probation after the end of the sentence, and the confiscation of his electronic devices. The court convicted him of insulting the state and its symbols, including its leaders, and attempting to destabilize the UAE’s relations with neighboring countries by publishing false reports and information on social media.

Since the moment of Mansour’s arrest, the UAE has faced widespread criticism. Amnesty International has condemned Mansour’s arrest and called for his immediate and unconditional release. UN experts called on the UAE to release Ahmed Mansour after his conviction, considering that his sentence “an unacceptable attack on freedom of expression and freedom to association.”

Recently, two years after the arrest of Mansour, many activists expressed the surprise at the UAE’s claim to respect the right of dissent and its desire to spread the image of tolerance and openness while continuing to arrest people for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Such as Mansour, Mohammed al-Rukn, Nasser bin Ghaith and others are unjustly imprisoned in state prisons on charges related to their defense of human rights.

International human rights groups have blamed the UAE authorities for any damage to Mansour, a hunger striker who may be subjected to ill-treatment and medical neglect, as did Nasser bin Ghaith, who launched a hunger strike twice for the same reasons that pushed Mansour.

Mansour was subjected to ill-treatment, spying on his phone, penetration of his data, travel ban and trial without fair trial granted by international organizations.

The information remains scarce, as the authorities of the UAE blackout the conditions of the detainees of opinion in the country so that the violations against them are not exposed.