Faisal Hayyat was arrested on 9 October and sentenced to 3 months in prison for a tweet which allegedly defamed the Sunni sect of Islam. Days earlier to his prosecution, Faisal posted an open letter to Facebook that targeted Bahrain's interior minister in which he spoke about his experience in being detained and tortured in 2011. His letter highlighted the corruption and restrictions for the civil and political speech of freedom. He is currently being held under article 309 of the criminal code which refers to 'part of an effort to reduce sectarian language on social media.'
Mr Hayyat is a sports journalist and social media activist who runs a YouTube channel called 'SnapHayyat'. During the 2011 Arab spring protests, he was arrested and held for 84 days at which he described that he was physically, psychologically tortured, sexual harassed and has had a 'degrading treatment' from the Bahrianian authorities.
In my opinion, the actions taken by the authorities are obviously not right. The actions taken are in fact hard to believe because as people, we are supposed put the war and the harming of others behind us but is seems like the Islam and Muslim community is picked out in mainstream white media since it has always been their duty to report this way - it causes controversy and makes topics like this go viral. Countries such as the USA have a track record of treating people (in the past) with torture or abnormal ways with Snowden being a decent example where he was extradited to Moscow as an agreement for not being tortured. (Source).
The only way to tackle problems such as this report is to have some sort of worldwide legislation or agreement for certain ways in which the speech of freedom is regulated and challenged because if every country has their own ability to control this, then they will be able to continue the act of torture or worst.
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