Abdulhadi al-Khawaja  Abdulhadi Abdulla Hubail al-Khawaja () is a Bahraini political activist. On 22 June 2011, al-Khawaja and eight others were sentenced to life imprisonment following the suppression of an Iranian-backed rising against the Bahraini government. al-Khawaja has previously gone on a series of hunger strikes while serving his life sentence, in protest of the political conditions in Bahrain. He is former president and co-founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), a nonprofit non-governmental organisation which works to promote human rights in Bahrain. He has held a number of positions and played various roles in regional and international human rights organizations. On 9 April 2011, al-Khawaja was arrested and tried as part of a campaign of repression by the Bahraini authorities following pro-democracy protests in the Bahraini uprising. Front Line Defenders expressed fear for his life following allegations of torture and sexual assault in detention. Al-Khawaja was sentenced on 22 June 2011, along with eight other activists, to life imprisonment. On 8 February 2012, he started an open-ended hunger strike until "freedom or death", protesting continuing detentions in Bahrain. The strike lasted for 110 days, and resulted in his being force-fed by authorities. Until February 2011, al-Khawaja was the Middle East and North Africa Protection Coordinator with Front Line Defenders – the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. He is also a member of the International Advisory Network in the Business and Human Rights Resource Center chaired by Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Al-Khawaja is a member of the Advisory Board of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and also an expert adviser for and member of the coordinating committee of The Arab Group for Monitoring Media Performance monitoring the media in Bahrain and six other Arab countries. Al-Khawaja was part of Amnesty International’s fact-finding mission in Iraq, and has been a researcher and project consultant for Amnesty International and other international organizations. His human rights campaigning activities have been acknowledged by the International Conference of Human Rights Defenders in Dublin, and he was named by the Arab Program for Human Rights Defenders as its Regional Activist of 2005. After finishing high school in Bahrain in 1977, al-Khawaja traveled to the UK to continue his further education. In 1979, he took part in student activities in London in reaction to demonstrations and arrests in Bahrain. Many students abroad, including al-Khawaja, were denied renewal of their passports and asked to return home.