Emirati Study Center: Releasing prisoners of conscience in the country is national and humanitarian duty
The Emirates Center for Studies and Media confirmed that the release of prisoners of conscience in the prisons of the ruling regime in the country represents a national and humanitarian duty in light of the escalating risks of the Coronavirus.
The Center highlighted the complaints of the families of Emirati and Arab detainees during the past few days about the transformation of the notorious Al Wathba prison in Abu Dhabi into a prison infested with Coronavirus, while the days go by and the authority finds no treatment for the situation and refuses to release the detainees from prisons.
The Center stated that until now there are confirmed cases of two detainees “Omani and Jordanian”. The human rights center stated that there are at least more than thirty cases of COVID-19 in prison, this matter makes staying in state prisons a humanitarian and moral crime that haunts the security apparatus and the Emirates Authority.
The Center also stressed that “it is bad to ignore the daily official announcements to follow the outbreak of the virus, mentioning the spread of the Coronavirus in official prisons, and to find remedies that start with the release of political detainees and find treatment for the rest of the other prisoners, and strengthen prison protection and communication methods between the prisoners and detainees.”
The Center confirmed that the situation is very bad and that they will be facing an accelerating development that makes prisons a fostering environment with weak spacing procedures inside prisons, and a new pivot point for the virus even after the country escapes the state of the pandemic.
A few days ago, a human rights organization leaked an audio recording of the distress of detainees in Al Wathba prison in the Emirates, after the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The leak, published by the Arab Organization for Human Rights confirmed that there are a large number of Coronavirus cases in the mentioned prison, after the authorities mixed the detainees with several wards.
The detainees complained about the leak, the absence of medical treatment or nakedness from the virus, and that the nurses in prison told them that the Ministry of Health was not providing sufficient medicines for the prison, which was described as being in a pandemic.
The UAE has ignored human rights demands to save the lives of prisoners of conscience, despite the threat of an outbreak of the Coronavirus, while human rights organizations have repeatedly condemned the poor conditions of UAE prisons and Abu Dhabi’s approach to arbitrary detention outside the law.
Few days ago, Amnesty International said that the conditions of prisoners of conscience in the UAE are from bad to worse with the interruption of family visits and the disruption of communications in light of the outbreak of the new Coronavirus.
The international organization has warned on its Twitter account of growing concerns about the health of human rights activist Ahmed Mansour, the detainees Abdul Rahman Shoman, the Lebanese Ahmed Sobh, and the Omani Abdullah_ Al-Shamsi, especially with information from the families of the latter two about their infection with COVID-19.
