Prominent Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab has launched a “full hunger strike” in protest at the misbehavior of the officials where he is imprisoned.

Rajab, the president of Bahrain Center for Human Rights, stopped taking food or water and medication on Friday after prison officials refused to allow him to take part in the mourning ceremony held for his mother who passed away on Thursday.

Rajab, who has been serving a three-year sentence since August for participation in “unauthorized” anti-regime demonstrations, was briefly released to attend the funeral procession on October 4.

During the Thursday ceremony, he called for more protests against the Saudi-backed Al Khalifa regime.

“I want and wish for all of you to go to the capital Manama, and everywhere else to fight for democracy, respect, and other rights. We will prove to them (the government) that even if they imprison us, kill us or our families, we will return and we will win this battle against their cruel policies, God willing,” he said.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Beirut-based political commentator Kamel Wazne to shed more light on the issue.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Wazne let’s start with the decisions that was made by [rights activist] Mr. Nabeel Rajab to go on a hunger strike. First of all so you think that was the right decision he made? What does it signify in his battle and similar human rights activists’ battle against the Manama regime?

Wazne: Well, obviously Mr. Rajab is a human [rights] activist who is fighting for justice in Bahrain. He used his voice against the injustice that is carried out by the Bahraini government. All he calls for is peaceful transition to a democratic state. He has actually been working very hard through peaceful means to make sure that the discrimination and the oppression that is committed against Bahrain is stopped. What the Bahraini [regime] did? They put him in jail because he gave a speech.

Supposedly the backer of Bahrain [the United States] adores the First Amendment in the United States, why when Mr. Rajab, a Bahraini citizen, speaks his mind and speaks his voice, the backer of the Bahraini [regime], the Americans, do not say: do not put him in prison because Bahrain deserves to be a democratic state and Bahrain deserves to be a country where people elect their government and everybody in Bahrain will have equal footing and they will not be discrimination and there will not be [social] classes in Bahrain.

I think that Mr. Rajab is a very courageous human rights activist and he is doing the right course of action like other leaders; like Gandhi, like Martin Luther King, like other activists around the world and his voice will reach and make the change to make Bahrain a better place for its people.

Press TV: Mr. Wazne just quickly if you can. Some people might be saying that in the case of Bahrain what is suppressing this popular movement there is the amount of support that the Manama regime is getting from its allies especially those including the United States who has got a military base there.

So would you say that without that kind of support, for instance, that people had in other revolutions in the Middle East; that the Bahraini people can be hopeful that this movement would lead to the democratic changes that they are looking for?

Wazne:Well, obviously the United States is impeding the process of the change that is supposed to take place in Bahrain. It is engaging the Bahraini government to crackdown against the Bahraini people but this will not stop the Bahraini people from carrying [out] their change and their voice will reach at the end, this country will have a democratic state and I think that the Americans are mistaken by backing this dictatorship.

Their action is shameful and condemned because the Bahraini people deserve to have a better life than the one they have and doctors and the human rights activists should not be imprisoned because on one hand they cure innocent people or patients and on the other hand, like Mr. Rajab, because he speaks his mind, he did not commit any crime except saying that Bahrain needs a new government, a new system, a democratic state.

MY/VG/HGH