Hawzah News Agency - Human Rights Watch and the UK-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) have censured Bahraini officials for failing to provide adequate medical care to jailed political activists, as the ruling Al Khalifah regime presses ahead with its clampdown on human rights activists and pro-democracy campaigners in the kingdom.

Two detained human rights defenders, as well as the family members of four jailed opposition activists, told HRW and BIRD that prison authorities are arbitrarily denying the inmates urgent medical care, refusing to refer them to specialists, failing to disclose their medical examination results, and withholding medication as a form of punishment.

The family of 57-year-old Abduljalil al-Singace, an academic who was a spokesman for the dissolved Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy, said his health has deteriorated significantly in detention.

Singace’s daughter said that he saw the prison doctor on August 28, for the first time since 2017.

Earlier requests for medical attention for neck and back pain that his family said resulted from torture had been denied.