A Quote by Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
There are no 'political prisoners' as such in Bahrain. People are not arrested because they express their views, we only have criminals.
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Of course, no state accepts [that it should call] the people it is imprisoning or detaining for political reasons, political prisoners. They don't call them political prisoners in China, they don't call them political prisoners in Azerbaijan and they don't call them political prisoners in the United States, U.K. or Sweden; it is absolutely intolerable to have that kind of self-perception.
In a sense there is no 'opposition' in Bahrain, as the phrase implies one unified block with the same views. Such a phrase is not in our constitution, unlike say the United Kingdom. We only have people with different views and that's ok.
In Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.
There are several dozen political prisoners in Russia. When I cite that number people are often very surprised. They often think there are more. Well - there are hundreds of thousands of people who haven't had a fair trial, who are victims of the political system. But in the Amnesty International sense of the word, most of them are not political prisoners because they are not going to prison for protesting.
This country maintains that there is no political prisoners, that everybody is criminals, but it's just not true.
Individual rights always go along with the interests of the society. I want to add that in Vietnam we have no political prisoners. No one is arrested or jailed for his or her speech or point of view. They are put in jail because they violated the law.
Due to the fact that I experienced personally the situation of a political prisoner, I have an historical commitment to all those that were or are prisoners just because they expressed their views, their public opinion, their own opinions.
I like the idea that there's no censorship, because it's consistent with my views that we live in a free society and people ought to be able to express their views.
My sense, and I'm sort of guessing, is that the journalists were being classified by the government as common criminals, and the political prisoners were so resistant to being that. Always keeping [the other prisoners] as murderers, thieves, that sort of thing, which has a certain irony to it, I guess. It's a curious thing.
The U.S. government does not recognize the existence of political prisoners in our country. The identity of political prisoners is concealed and, consequently, their right to justice is denied.
Criminals look at identity theft and say only 1 in 700 criminals gets convicted of it. And they look at check forgery and they know that for every 1,400 forgers arrested, only about 123 get convicted and about 26 go to jail. So the rewards are great, but the risks are very slim. So that's one of the reasons that make it very popular.
The First Amendment is really at the very core of political speech, and political speech is at the core of the First Amendment. So, we want to be very careful to make sure that candidates for office are free to express their views so that people will make an informed choice. We don't want them holding back, and sort of concealing their views and then disclosing them afterwards.
I care about Bahrain. Bahrain is very dear to me. I will not allow people to play around with our laws.
People, regardless of political views, matter in this state and in this country and in this world. And, you know, when people attack people's basic rights and livelihoods, I'm concerned about it. And as a citizen of Queensland and nothing else, I've got the right to express my view.
With Pussy Riot - this was a prank! It was a brilliant, artistically gifted prank. But they didn't expect to go to prison! They were college girls who became political prisoners for two years. That makes them very similar to the people who were "just going to a protest one day" and got arrested. They had no idea they were risking the rest of their lives. Because you're never the same after you've spent two years in a gulag.
Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write.
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