Ayat Al Qurmuzi (aka Ayat al-Qarmezi or Ayat al-Ghermezi) is a young Bahraini poet that was sentenced to one year in prison just for reading out a poem criticizing the country’s King!
Ayat Hassan Mohammed Al Qurmuzi was still a 20 year old student at the Faculty of Teachers in Bahrain From Sadad, when she was arrested in March 2011 for reading out a poem at a pro-reform rally in the capital Manama (Bahrain Protests). At the night of her arrest, Ayat’s parents were threatened to witness the killing of all their children if they did not disclose her whereabouts. The police raided her parents’ house and made four of her brothers lie on the floor at gunpoint, while one policeman shouted at her father to tell them where she was or they would kill all the sons in front of their eyes. The authorities initially denied her arrest, and asked her family to report her as missing, which put them in a very difficult psychological state of anxiety.
Ayat Al Qurmuzi was charged with “incitement to hatred of the regime” and was reportedly tortured while in detention; Ayat was whipped across the face with electric cable, and held for days in a tiny cell with freezing temperatures… On 12 June, Ayat was sentenced to one year in prison by a security court, without the presence of any lawyer to defend her. She was later released on 13 July without any clarifications.
To note that at least 500 were detained and four had died in custody in suspicious circumstances. In addition to the unjust military trials, more than 2,000 people were dismissed or suspended from their jobs, as part of a purge of those who participated in the protests.
The most humiliating part was that Ayat was forced to give a televised speech in which she acknowledges that she had done wrong to the King and to other Bahraini officials and asks for forgiveness. Like many others, she had no choice; her life as well as those of her family members were at stake, and when the dictator is backed by neighboring KSA and the west, the alternatives are rather limited.
Ayat Al Qurmuzi was nominated for the Arab Revolution Women Award in 2011.
Below is a video with the the full poem in Arabic. The introduction is as follows:
“I introduce to you my name. My name is Ayat Al Qurmuzi, student at the College of Bahrain for Teachers. At the beginning, I would like to send a short message to those who think they will sing and dance on our misery, on the sectarian strife led by the one-eyed TV channel (BTV).
“We do not want to live in a palace and we do not want to be presidents (kings). We are people who kill humiliation and assassinate misery. We are the people who use peace to destroy the foundation of injustice. We, the people, do not want the people to remain set back (behind the times).