Bahrain: Courts Try to Silence Women’s Rights Activist

From The Human Rights Project

Release by Human Rights Watch

(New York, June 2, 2005) — The Bahraini government should drop charges against a leading women’s rights activist who goes on trial Saturday for publicly criticizing family court judges, Human Rights Watch said today. If convicted, Ghada Jamsheer faces up to 15 years in prison.

A prominent advocate for women’s rights in Bahrain, Ghada Jamsheer heads the Women’s Petition Committee, a network of activists demanding the codification of the kingdom’s family laws and the reform of its family courts. In April 2003, the organization collected 1,700 signatures on a petition demanding legislative and judicial reform of these courts. For the past four years, Ghada Jamsheer has organized protests, vigils and a hunger strike in an effort to draw attention to the suffering of women in the existing family court system.

Read the rest of this release at the Human Rights Watch website