Bahrain Mirror: The Bahraini embassy in London told the Middle East Eye that the prominent dissident Hasan Mushaima has refused to attend his specialist's appointments at outside hospitals, including his scheduled PET scans scheduled last year because he refuses to wear the prison uniform.

It claimed that Manama was not denying medical care to Hasan Mushaima, who suffers from cancer disease.

The authorities don't ask inmates in Bahrain to wear a certain uniform inside the prison. They used to allow them to wear their clothes when going to medical visits too, before issuing a sudden decision obliging inmates to wear the prison uniform when leaving the prison facility. However, the detained opposition leaders refused this decision.

Mushaima was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison for leading Lualua roundabout protests.

Ali Mushaima, who has been on hunger strike for 10 days, in protest of his father being denied urgent medical care in a Bahrain jail, commented on the embassy's statement saying that his father was forced to walk in chains and shackles to receive treatment.

"Rather than giving him his medication inside his cell, the Bahrainis are making him walk to a counter for his medicine in this uniform," Mushaima said. "He is an old man, and they are trying to use any excuse to humiliate him and break him down."

Relying upon activists and friends who have come out to support him, the Ali Mushaima has slept outside the Bahraini embassy on a thin mattress and a sleeping bag.

Middle East eye that met Mushaima in his protest site reported him saying that he had lost five kilograms since going on hunger strike.

"This was not an easy decision to make. I left my wife and daughter to be out here. But if this is the only way to save my father, then so be it," said Mushaima.

"I will continue being on hunger strike until my father is given the rights that he deserves."

Images posted on social media showed him praying in the rain and sitting outside the embassy with placards and a picture of his father, Hasan Mushaima.

"If [UK Prime Minister] Theresa May and her colleagues want what is best for Ali and his father, then they must end their arms sales to the regime and put pressure on it to free Hassan and other political prisoners," Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade told MEE.  

A spokesperson for Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office told Reuters: "We believe that only by working with Bahrain can we hope to bring about the changes we would like to see."

Arabic Version