I write to expresses my serious concern for the welfare of Mr Hakeem al-Araibi, an Australian resident and professional footballer, who has been detained in Thailand pending possible extradition to Bahrain and call for his immediate release and return to Australia.

 This course of action taken by the Thai and Bahrain governments contravenes international human rights law and places Mr al-Araibi, a recognised refugee and torture survivor, at grave risk of imprisonment and torture if forcibly extradited.  According to the Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, (GIDHR) there are currently over 4,000 prisoners of conscience in Bahrain. 11 citizens died as a result of torture in Bahrain’s prisons in 2017.

 I fully support actions to secure safety of Mr al-Araibi by Mr Craig Foster, former Socceroos captain and member of Australian Multicultural Council who visited Mr al-Araibi in prison and recently met with FIFA in Zurich to present more than 50,000 petition signatures calling for Mr al-Araibi release.

I urge the Australian government and civic society to use all the leverage at their disposal to assist in Hakeem’s immediate release, so that he can be safely reunited with his wife and rebuild the new life the Australian government has granted him in Australia.

Professor Audrey Osler, Editor-in-Chief Human Rights Education Review www.humanrer.org and myself plan to publish a special edition HRER featuring some of the best papers from the International Conference on Human Rights Education in Sydney in December 2018.  If you presented a paper at this conference and would like it to be considered you should submit an extended abstract (max 300 words) by 31 January  2019 to HRER clearly marking your submission ‘9th ICHRE SYDNEY’. Full papers will be required by 31 March. Further details on word length,  formatting and submission via the HRER platform can be found at https://humanrer.org/index.php/human/about/submissions  Please note that the 300 word abstract is designed to help us make an initial choice. Final papers should follow the normal abstract length. HRER is an open access journal that doe not charge either authors or readers. We  work with authors to give published papers maximum exposure.

The editors will make a selection of potential papers for the special edition after 31 January 2019, when we will contact all those who have submitted abstracts. It is possible that if we have more than enough strong papers for the special edition that some authors will be encouraged to submit through the standard process.

We invite you to register for HRER here so that you get future updates on the journal: https://journals.hioa.no/index.php/human/user/register

If you experience any difficulties in uploading an abstract, please contact Gabriela Mezzanotti Gabriela.Mezzanotti@usn.no

You can also follow HRER on Twitter: @humanrer

We look forward to receiving your abstract in due course.