Aayat Alqormozi is a Bahraini poet who was arrested and tortured for reading her work during the 2011 Arab Spring protests in Bahrain. Following the recitation of her poem during a protest at Pearl Square, Alqormozi was expelled from the university and imprisoned. She was indicted for “insulting the king and encouraging hatred of the ruling regime” and sentenced to a year in jail. Following a public outcry, Alqormozi was released after three months and placed under house arrest. While in prison, she was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement but went on to make public statements about torture immediately after her release. Alqormozi received the Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent in 2017 due to her continuous advocacy for political prisoners in Bahrain and her fight to highlight the government’s human rights violations.