F1 star Hamilton vows to fight to improve human rights

World champion Lewis Hamilton vowed to not ignore pleas to enhance human rights in Bahrain and different international locations the place Formula One hosts races, after studying letters from alleged torture survivors and being despatched a drawing from the younger son of a Bahraini man on dying row.

Hamilton obtained personally addressed letters from three alleged torture victims in Bahrain forward of a race there two weeks in the past, and has since learn them.

“I think there’s definitely work to be done in the background and I definitely won’t let it go unnoticed,” the seven-time F1 champion stated on Saturday.

Included with the letters to Hamilton was a photograph of 11-year-old Ahmed, who’s proudly holding up his drawing of Hamilton’s Mercedes F1 automobile.

The drawing, which was despatched by electronic mail to The Associated Press, got here with the boy’s private written plea: “Lewis, Please save my father.”

“When I was drawing the car I thought that it could save my father,” the boy stated. “We struggle every day without him, I really hope he comes back to us.”

He is the son of Mohammed Ramadhan, who in his letter to Hamilton stated he was arrested after supporting Bahrain’s pro-democracy rebellion after which allegedly framed in a homicide case and overwhelmed with iron bars as a way to extract his confession. He is going through execution.

“I think the saddest thing for me was that there’s a young man on death row and it’s not clear … and when his son writes me a letter it really hits home. All lives matter,” Hamilton stated from the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

“When I get some time now, I will definitely try and speak to (people) and see how I can positively impact that (F1) weekend as a sport moving forwards.”

Hamilton stated he needed to handle the human rights problem with Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa final week in Bahrain — the second of two races to be held there — however needed to sit out that race after contracting the coronavirus.

“I’d hoped after the first race to have had time to sit and address it with the Crown Prince, but I was bed-ridden for most of the week and I wasn’t able to see anybody,” Hamilton stated.

“Now, look, ultimately it isn’t necessarily my responsibility to speak up on the places that I don’t know everything about. But I think that, we together, always have to work to push for change, for improvements.”

Mohammed Ramadhan’s spouse and mother-of-three Zainab Ebrahim stated she has been deeply traumatized.

“This year has been the most heart-wrenching with the realization that Mohammed’s death sentence would not be overturned. Living with that reality every day and having to tell my children that their father was never coming home has broken me,” Ebrahim stated.

“My husband is an innocent man, He has done nothing wrong. It is time for this nightmare to end and he is set free to return to those who love him.”

Ebrahim and her son’s feedback have been despatched to the AP by Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the Director of the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy.

“When world champions like Lewis Hamilton speak out, lives can change forever,” Alwadaei instructed The AP. “F1 has a responsibility to support Lewis in speaking out.” When Hamilton initially obtained the letters, he was additionally copied in on an NGO letter despatched to F1 chairman Chase Carey itemizing alleged abuses within the Persian Gulf island since 2011.

“The human rights issue in so many of the places we go to is a massive problem,” Hamilton stated in response on the time, pledging to learn the letters he’d been given. “I do think as a sport we need to do more … not just saying that we’re going to do something.” More than a dozen rights teams co-signed a letter endorsed by Amnesty International to Carey, urging F1 to leverage compensation for victims and guarantee individuals can protest with out reprisals.

Bahrain is accused of exploiting F1 to gloss over, or “Sportswash” its human rights file, through the use of a high-profile sporting occasion to challenge a positive picture of their nation. Another letter despatched to Carey, co-signed by 30 British cross-party parliamentarians, requested F1 to implement its human rights coverage on the Bahrain GP amid issues about rights violations linked to the race.

“I don’t think we have a massive problem,” Carey stated in an interview with CNN earlier this month. “I think the world could use a few more places where you try and create good through encouragement and positive reinforcement, as opposed to boycotting or protesting.”

Carey’s feedback have been strongly disputed by mother-of-four Najah Yusuf, one in all three who wrote to Hamilton together with Ali AlHajee, a person who’s in Jau Prison after organizing pro-democracy protests.

The three survivors’ letters, initially reported by The Guardian newspaper and obtained by The AP, include harrowing descriptions of utmost beatings, torture and sexual abuse.

The AP has requested Bahrain’s National Communication Centre and the Bahrain Embassy in Britain to touch upon the accusations.

“The government of Bahrain takes the protection of its citizens’ human rights and freedom of expression extremely seriously, and this is explicitly protected by Bahrain’s constitution,” the centre stated in a press release on Nov. 27.