The Formula One auto race scheduled for next week in Bahrain has been given the green
light by the International Automobile Federation, or FIA. The race was cancelled
last year after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protestors, which led to the deaths
of at least 30 people.
Demonstrations and violence have continued since then,
and Monday a home-made bomb wounded seven Bahraini policemen during a protest near
the capital. Another factor weighing on the situation is the health of jailed human-rights
activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who has been on hunger strike for over two months.
Al-Khawaja
served for three years as Protection Coordinator for the Middle East for the Dublin
human-rights group Front Line Defenders. He resigned in February last year to focus
on human rights in Bahrain.
“We...weren’t calling for the cancellation of the
Formula One race in Bahrain,” said Mary Lawlor, the Executive Director of Front Line
Defenders.
“However, we are very concerned that Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is
on his 65th day of hunger strike in Bahrain, and time is running out,” she told Vatican
Radio. “We had hoped that the organizers of Formula One would use their influence
and seek his transfer on medical grounds to Denmark [where al-Khawaja has dual citizenship],
or any other institution that is able to treat somebody in his medical condition.”
Lawlor
said there is still a window of hope for al-Khawaja.
“Formula One is really
the only thing that the Bahraini government really want, and now it is going ahead,”
she pointed out. “Maybe there is space for negotiation on behalf of Abdulhadi for
humanitarian reasons that the Bahraini government would exercise mercy.”
Listen
to the extended interview by Charles Collins with Mary Lawlor: