After being detained in Bahrain Sunday, Anna Therese Day, freelance journalist and University of Wisconsin alumna and three members of her camera crew were released from custody Tuesday and will leave the country soon.
Day was covering the anniversary of Bahrain’s 2011 uprising when authorities detained her and charged her with “intent to commit a crime,” according to a WKOW article.
Jennifer Loewenstein, Penn State University Middle Eastern studies and English faculty associate, taught at UW for 25 years before leaving in summer 2015. Day was Loewenstein’s student in a modern Middle East introductory course when she was a UW undergraduate.
Loewenstein said Day has always been someone willing to look beyond the American side of a story when it comes to Middle Eastern conflicts and U.S. foreign relations.
“I was very impressed by the fact that she went to the Gaza Strip, to Cairo, to Beirut and to a number of other places in the Middle East,” Loewenstein said. “She is a very determined person and just irrepressible in her search for answers that go beyond what our media and our government tell us.”
Loewenstein said Day wanted to do more than just cover Middle Eastern conflicts. She also wanted to expose the role of the U.S. in stirring up some of the tension and hostility there, Loewenstein said.
Loewenstein said she was unsure of the reason Day and her crew were captured and detained, but Day probably drew attention to herself as a foreigner alongside the protesters in Bahrain.
Bahrain is a Shia Muslim state, and an authoritarian Sunni government rules the country, Loewenstein said. The Shia population was protesting against their mistreatment the experienced from the Khalifa government and the lack of democratic state policies.
Loewenstein said Day has always been on the side of the mistreated, and she admires Day’s courage and devotion to actually do the things many people would not do.
“Anna is the kind of person who want to show solidarity with people who are being unfairly ruled, unfairly oppressed by their government, and I admire that immensely,” Loewenstein said.
