http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=28937

The interactive map aims to bring clarity to the number of Middle East youth kept behind bars for various human rights activities.

With the number of youth across the globe imprisoned for human rights activism rising, a new map has been released to clarify the picture.

The World Youth Movement for Democracy, together with local human rights organizations across the world, are trying present an accurate picture of the number of youth sitting behind bars by launching a web-based map that details each individual case.

“Our main goal is that we want to spread information about all the political prisoners in the world,” said Mohamed Al Maskati, President of the Bahraini Youth Society for Human Rights, one of the organizations behind the campaign.

“We are not focusing on all political prisoners but we are focusing about the youth, especially those who are working as human rights activists or political activists, journalists or bloggers working with non violent actions,” Al Maskati told The Media Line.

Al-Maskati said that one important part of the campaign was getting the world out.

(more…)

Mohammed Al-Maskati, President of Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) received a great amount of support from World Youth Movement for Democracy members prior to his recent trial. However, his plight is far from over and needs our support now more than ever!

Al-Maskati, along with activists Abdul Ghani Al-Khanjar and Nabeel Rajab, have recently been attacked by a slanderous media campaign. They have been accused of having links to foreign governments, committing acts of violence by using Molotov cocktails, and betraying Bahrain. They were also accused of inciting young people to violence against the state and defaming the state to international organizations. These allegations were printed as libel in three prominent newspapers, and have contributed to rising public hostility towards human rights defenders. These attacks began shortly after the release of a Human Rights Watch report that exposed the lack of human rights in Bahrain, in which Al-Maskati, Rajab, and Al-Khanjar were credited for their assistance, in a likely attempt to discredit the report. To learn more, go to www.hrw.org.

(more…)