Zainab Al-Khawaja (a.k.a. @AngryArabiya)

Zainab Al-Khawaja

UPDATE: According to @angryarabiya, on June 15, 2011 Zainab and two other Bahraini women went to the UN offices in Bahrain to give Ban Ki-Moon a letter. They were threatened by the UN and asked to leave. The women chose to sit-in peacefully, then female police officers forcibly removed them from the UN offices and took them to court. The women were released on the condition that they stay in Bahrain until the next hearing.

Zainab Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini woman who caught the media's attention when she went on a hunger strike to protest the unjust arrest of her father, human rights activist Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, and her husband and brother.

Zainab's tweet about her hunger strike

A Facebook page emerged called 'We are All Zainab Al-Khawaja' in support of Zainab's hunger strike. Zainab ended her hunger strike after 10 days claiming, "being silent in a tomb and not able to speak is not in the interests of my family".

Today, on Twitter, a Bahraini journalist reported that Zainab Al-Khawaja is being interrogated by Bahraini forces. Zainab and her closest male relatives are currently in Bahraini custody; their crime? The desire for freedom.

Zainab Al-Khawaja and her father (lower left), husband & child (lower right) 

This is just one of many cases of unjust arrests and trials conducted by the Bahraini government and this MUST stop. Maryam Al-Khawaja, Zainab's sister, is a fellow activist who posted a tweet expressing her opinion as to why Zainab is being interrogated. Maryam claims that it is an attempt to blackmail her and her father, an attempt Maryam says has only added to the Al-Khawaja family's determination.