Hawzah News Agency (London, UK) - Marking seven years since the start of the popular uprising in Bahrain, rights campaigners staged protests outside the kingdom's embassies in London and Washington DC.

Chanting slogans against the regime in Manama, a small group of protesters gathered in London and held up posters of Bahraini political prisoners, snapshots of the mass protests that rocked Bahrain in February 2011 as well as images of victims of the bloody crackdown that followed.

Former Bahraini lawmaker Jawad Fayrouz, who took part in the rally, believes that the desire for democratic reforms in Bahrain still exists.

"What we are seeing today and what we have heard … about a popular presence in the streets [of Bahrain] is proof and reaffirmation that there is popular insistence to fulfill the popular demands and achieve the transition to democracy," Fayrouz told the UK-based BahrainAlyoum.

Meanwhile, Quaker activist Sam Walton described Bahrain as "a country that is ready for democracy".

"These people thirst for democracy and they will get it, and they will get it soon," Walton opined.

Similar scenes unfolded in the US capital where activists stood in solidarity with Bahrain's prisoners of conscience.

Participants in the rally called for the release of Bahraini political prisoner and an end to Manama's clampdown against human rights defenders.