Interview: Maryam Al-Khawaja, Feb 2013

PROTECT ONE. EMPOWER A THOUSAND.
All over the world, human rights defenders are facing violence, attack, harassment, intimidation, surveillance, home imprisonment, detention, threats, slander and loss of livelihoods - all for working to promote and protect the human rights of others.

Mirziya Maryam Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is a Bahraini human rights defender. She is the daughter of the prominent Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and head of the foreign relations office and vice president for the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. She has been the acting President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights since Nabeel Rajab was arrested.

Maryam was born in Syria to Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who had been banned from Bahrain since the mid-1980s and Khadija Almousawi. At the age of two, her family was able to get political asylum in Denmark. They lived there until 2001 when they were allowed re-entry into Bahrain.