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.
“We want to spread the information about them [the prisoners] to international organizations, to the media, to the local organization, to the diplomats and governments all over the world,” he said.
“We have a lot of youth political prisoners in the Middle East,” including Egypt, Iran, Yemen and Bahrain, Al-Maskati added.
He pointed out that not having any compiled information on the exact number of prisoners was a problem.
In a recent report for Human Rights Watch, deputy Middle East director Joe Stork noted that Bahrain had recent imposed a $1,325 fine Maskati’s organization for operating a non-governmental organization in violation of the Bahraini Civil Associations Law.
“Mohammad al-Maskati tried to comply with the law, and the authorities responded by punishing him with a large fine,” Stork was quoted as saying.
The map is based on the Google map system and each prisoner is cited with a marker. A user can click on the marker to get all the information about that particular prisoner.
The new campaign has set up a website (http://www.wymdonline.org/political-prisoner-campaign.html [1]) from which users can send an e-mail to either update the information or add a new prisoner.
In addition to being added the map, the information will be forwarded to other human right organizations and the media.
Some current cases on the map include Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer who was sentenced to four years in prison of which three were for contempt of religion and one year for defaming Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Other prisoners on the map are Iranians Mohommad Olyayi Fard, sentenced to one year for ‘propaganda against the system’ and Ali Bikas, who is serving seven years for organizing student protest at Tabriz University, one of the five largest universities in Iran.
“It’s clearly an important initiative” Nadim Houry, a Researcher for Human Rights Watch, “There are a number of challenges in keeping track of political prisoner in the region.”
Houry noted that there is reliable data on the more well known political prisoners, and this initiative would help regarding the lesser known ones.
“The bigger problems are for the prisoners that are lesser know or are Islamists who might not belong to large organizations,” Houry said.