A Glimpse Into TheHuman Rights Violations in the UAE
World leaders remain silent over human rights violations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A Human Rights Watch world report released in 2022 highlights how the UAE continues to invest in a “soft power” strategy by falsely concealing its nation as progressive, tolerant, and rights-respecting. However, a reality check reveals UAE’s horrendous human rights trackrecord.
The UAEviolates freedom of expression and privacy rights through the use of arbitrary imprisonment, unlawful international attacks, and detainee abuse.
UAE subjects migrant workers to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
UAE pays migrant workers poorly and subjects them to forced labour and illegal deportation without due process rights.
The UAE contributes significantly to the climate change crisis by being one of the world’s top ten oil producers and a top five per capita emitter of greenhouse gases. The UAE lobbied to push back the oil production cuts agreed between global oil producers during the pandemic.
Discrimination against women is commonplace.
All sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage is illegal, carrying a minimum prison sentence of one year.
A glimpse into how the UAE operates highlights a dark reality behind the spectacular skyscrapers, luxury lifestyles, and sunny beaches. The playground for the global rich operates at a high price for human rights.
Arbitrary Imprisonment of Human Rights Defenders
UAE94 Group of Human Rights Defenders
The arbitrary imprisonment of prominent human rights defenders (HRD) showcases the UAE’s strict intolerance of political dissent and freedom of expression. July 2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the arrest and arbitrary detention of the UAE94. This is a group of HRD, lawyers, judges, teachers, academics, and students peacefully protesting for political reform in the UAE. UAE wrongfully convicted the UAE94 protesters of “plotting a coup against the government”. As a result, the UAE94 were subject to forced disappearances, torture, and illegal imprisonment. The UAE systematically cracks downs and condemns, online and offline, critical and independent figures who advocate for human rights.
Al-Roken is a peaceful human rights activist seeking minimal democratic reforms. UAE authorities have still not released Al-Roken despite finishing his ten-year sentence on July 17th 2022. The UAE continue to hold detainees past the completion of their prison terms under the “counter-extremism counselling” law. This law cannot be appealed. 4/11 prisoners were released under Ramadan pardons during April 2022. However, the other seven remained in prison, despite already completing their sentences.
Faisal Ali al-Shehhi (3 years, 11 months after the end of the sentence),
Ahmed al-Molla (3 years, 11 months),
Saeed Abdullah al-Buraimi (3 years, one month) and
Mansoor Hassan al-Ahmedi (1 year, five months).
The UAE released Mansoor, a prominent Emirati HRD, in April 2022. Regional media outlets published Mansoor’s letter detailing the abuse he was facing in prison. In his prison letter, Mansoor highlights a lack of due process rights and access to a fair trial. Furthermore, the UAE held Mansoor in solitary confinement since his imprisonment in March 2017.
Human Rights Watch reported how the UAE authorities retaliated in response to the letter’s publication. Thus, authorities moved Manssor to a more isolated cell and denied him critical medical care. Mansoor was held incommunicado without basic needs such as a bed and mattress.
UAE Commits Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment Towards Migrant Workers
UAE authorities arbitrarily detained 375 African migrant workers taking them to al-Wathba prison on the 24th and 25th of June 2022. The migrant workers, who came from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Uganda, were illegally deported and unable to challenge the UAE decision. The Reuters Foundation reported that UAE illegally deported Cameroonians despite the ongoing violence in Cameroon.
World Leaders Remain Silent Over Human Rights Abuse in UAE
The United Nations and some of UAE’s strongest allies like the United States, United Kingdom, France and others should publically call for an immediate release of UAE HRD. For example, the US provide logistical and intelligence support to the UAE alongside military and arms support. Thus, their continued ignorance of the ongoing human rights abuse has been highlighted time and time again.
UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan embarked on his first official visit to France to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron on July 18th 2022. During the visit, they signed a strategic energy deal discussing environmental and technological issues. However, Macron did not discuss UAE’s human rights situation.
This highlights the world leader’s ignorance over the human rights violations in the UAE. Moreover, world leaders should not ignore UAE’s dismal human rights and should call UAE out for its actions.Macron should publicly raise human rights concerns and publicly call for the release of arbitrarily detained HRD.
Caption: French president Macron meets UAE president al-Nahyan during his inaugural state visit to France in July 2022.
UAE Plays Prominent Role in Conflicts Abroad
The UAE plays a prominent role in wars occurring beyond its borders, such as those happening in the Middle East.
Firstly, Saudi and UAE-led coalitions have conducted atrocious military operations in Yemen. This has resulted in horrendous civilian harm and egregious international humanitarian and human rights violations. Since 2019, the UAE has significantly reduced its military presence in Yemen. However, the UAE has built a substantial army of local forces and continues to fuel the conflict.
Secondly, the UAE authorities killed civilians in unlawful air and drone strikes in Lybia while supplying the Libyan Arab Forces (LAF) with weapons and ammunition. The LAF has committed international humanitarian law and human rights violations.
Thirdly, in January 2022, the UAE and Isreal signed a multi-billion dollar free trade agreement.The deal targets more than $10 billion in annual bilateral trade over the next five years. Making this the most significant trade agreement between Israel and any Arab country.
Many have expressed deep anger at the UAE’s support of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Isreal continues to defy international law, engage in reckless airstrikes, and commit war crimes and crimes against humanityon the Palestinians. Isreal intentionally targets medical facilities, schools, and human rights activists while maintaining an illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip.
In 2020, Emirati poet, scholar and diplomat Dhabiya Khamis from UAE was banned by authorities from leaving Dubai International Airport on her way to Cairo. The travel ban was enforced due to her opposition to the UAE’s normalization deal with Israel. Khamis was punished for exercising her freedom of expression, which is strictly limited in the UAE.
Caption: Israeli Prime Minister meets Abu Dhabi Crown Prince in December 2022. Image obtained from CNN.
Mass Surveillance Violates Human Rights in the UAE
The UAE continue to deploy mass surveillance on its citizens, violating numerous human rights laws related to freedom of expression and privacy. Furthermore, the UAE deploy their surveillance capabilities offline through mass facial recognition in public spaces.
Additionally, news reports have demonstrated how UAE authorities exploit Israeli spyware to access journalists, activists, and world leaders’ private communications and encrypted messages.
Discrimination Against Women in the UAE
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed concerns over UAE’s continued discrimination against women in their law and practice.
Some provisions of UAE law regulating personal status matters discriminate against women. An example is a law stating how men can unilaterally divorce their wives. However, a woman must apply for a court order to obtain a divorce. Additionally, is that a woman can lose her right to maintenance if she refuses to have sexual relations with her husband without a lawful excuse. Furthermore, UAE’s nationality law provides that children of Emirati men are automatically entitled to UAE citizenship. However, children born to Emirati mothers and foreign fathers do not have this right.
Key Takeaways
World leaders continue to engage in diplomatic relations and trade deals with the UAE despite the authority’s complete disregard for human rights. UAE authorities rely on torture and abuse to consolidate their oppressive regime.
World leaders must address the arbitrary imprisonment of HRD and the offensive military operations by the UAE in countries such as Yemen, Syria and Libya. Unfortunately, this has not stopped world leaders in France, the United States and the United Kingdom from continuing friendly relations and remaining silent over the human rights violations. In addition, UAE’s billion-dollar trade deal with Isreal in January 2022 highlights the nation’s true colours, which are dishonourable, corrupt and immoral.
Furthermore, UAE continues to violate freedom of expression and privacy through its illegal mass surveillance operations. Women are discriminated against in UAE’s law and practice, which must be addressed by organizations such as the United Nations.
International civil society must continue to raise concerns over UAE’s human rights record and call on world leaders to take action against their violations.
I don’t think that most Muslims hate ordinary Americans who believe in the general principle of “live and let live.” Moreover I don’t think that most Americans would unhesitatingly embrace Israeli Nazism if they had the chance to know the truth about Israel e.g. that it is a criminal state par excellence based on ethnic cleansing land theft and racist and religious discrimination.
Unfortunately most Americans are spoon-fed Jewish propaganda from early childhood. This creates a virtual reality in America’s collective mind about Israel a virtual reality that is nearly completely disconnected from the real reality in Israel-Palestine.
For example many Americans are made to think that Israel and America have much in common in terms of democracy. However the truth is that democracy in Israel is more or less confined to Jews while non-Jews are systematically discriminated against. Their land is confiscated their homes are demolished and their rights and dignity are trampled upon.
And when they seek redress at Jewish courts they discover that non-Jews can’t possibly hope for true justice and equality under Jewish rule. Ask non-Jewish Americans who have been living in Israel and you will hear a lot of hair-raising stories about the Israeli “democracy.”
Some Americans are so brainwashed that they are willing to claim that Muslims hate America for its freedoms. This is what Georg W. Bush probably the most ignorant President America has ever had once claimed.
The truth of the matter however is that most Muslims hate the US government for embracing tyrannical Arab and Muslim regimes that torment their own people by denying them natural freedoms and civil liberties as well as the right to freely elect their own governments. This is in addition of course to backing and supporting Israel’s Nazi-like policies including ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion at the expense of the native Palestinians.
It is really scandalous that while Americans boasts bout their First Amendment freedoms successive American governments have consistently embraced despotic regimes abroad. In many instances the US intervened either brazenly or behind the scenes to destabilize or overthrow democratically elected governments such as in Iran Chile and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Of courser America’s days of infamy are too numerous to be counted. For example we all tend to view Adolph Hitler as the ultimate embodiment of evil. However it is historically true that the US its allies Stalin Mao murdered more people than the Third Reich ever did.
America wanted to be looked upon as a moral example to be followed. But the beacon of light eventually turned into a ruthless beastly power where military might took priority over moral power.
Take for example America’s stand over Israel. For decades the United States enabled Israel to violate every international law and norm and commit every conceivable crime under the sun including murdering children by raining on them White phosphorus.
This is the same America that allows herself to judge the world for human rights violations while enabling Israel diplomatically politically and mainly militarily to pursue decidedly Nazi-like policies against the Peoples of the Middle East.
Watch the ongoing genocidal onslaught which against our helpless and unprotected people in the Gaza Strip. Some of you might be prompted to think that I am indulging in excessive exaggeration when I speak of a genocidal onslaught.
But I am not. Otherwise, how else can we describe a condition where hundreds of ultra-advanced war planes rain missiles and laser-guided bombs from high altitudes on apartment buildings, homes, and civilian neighborhoods packed with men, women and children? Yet, this is exactly what Israel has done¸ murdering , maiming and incinerating thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and utterly destroying tens of thousands of buildings.
Israel effectively destroyed Gaza, murdering and maiming untold numbers of civilians. Gaza, more or less, became the Dresden of Palestine. And the whole world looked on rather passively as if the killing-field and the shockingly pornographic destruction of life and property were occurring on a distant galaxy. we are not really talking about war, even an asymmetrical war. We are actually talking about a real massacre, a massacre that is reminiscent of the time when the Nazis ganged up on European Jewry 70 years ago.
The macabre scenes of decapitated and badly-mutilated children were too shocking to be described in words. Reporters at the site of the carnage lost their composure and collapsed as they couldn’t cope with the gruesomeness of the pornographic bloodbath.
In 2006, the Nazi government of Israel dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over Lebanon enough to kill or maim 2-3 million Lebanese children. And instead of denouncing the manifestly nefarious act the US government declared that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
Today there is an anti-Islamic hysteria in the United States. The main reason for this hysteria is the fact that the United States can’t live normally with itself without an external enemy. In short there has to be an enemy in order to keep the American psyche intact. There has to be an enemy in order to keep the military industrial complex functioning. In short capitalism can’t function without war.
In fact Muslims don’t view themselves as enemies of the United States as the vast bulk of Muslims are peaceable people who are mainly interested in the pursuance of their daily life enhancing their daily living improving their standard of living and making ends meet.
Yes there are violent groups here and there but these are tiny groups which in no way represent the Muslims of the world.
I think many Americans are ignorant of these facts. I also think that many other Americans would condemn Muslims right or wrong. I am talking about people who would burn the Muslim Holy scripture the Quran in order to highlight their hatred of Islam a religion with more than 1.6 billion people.
Well to those I say one thing: the dogs will keep barking and the caravan will keep going.
Besides if you have one reason to hate us we have a thousand reasons to hate you.
None the less unlike you we are not willing to allow our primitive impulses to decide our behaviors. Our religion the source of our morality and behavior doesn’t allow us to behave the way they do.
This is why we will not burn copies of the New Testament we will not attack churches and we will not call Christianity bad names.
It is often claimed that the religion Jesus founded is based on Love. But any fleeting view of your “religion” caricatures a hate-based cult that has very little to do with Jesus and the authentic messages he preached.
Did Jesus ever call children “murderers” as you did recently in Texas? In fact I dare say that you and people who subscribe to your cultist hatefulness are a cancer upon the conscience of Christ.
So you hate us because of the 9/11 events. Well 99% of Muslims condemned in the strongest terms these terrorist acts. And we are sorry for the umpteenth time for the death of dozens of hundreds of innocent Americans including Muslims in these terrorist attacks.
None the less your democratic elected government has been responsible for the death of millions of Muslims. In Iraq alone the United States has killed or caused the death of at least two million Muslims in the past two decades. Hundreds of thousands of other Muslims have been killed in Afghanistan. These are just two examples of America’s genocidal wars against the Muslim world.
Hence if you have the right to cite one 9/11 we can cite hundreds and thousands of 9/11s. And don’t you ever think that your lives are worth more than our lives. All human beings were created by the same God and are equal if only because there is no such a thing as a lesser God.
One day the oppressed will have their day and there will be no spin no hasbara and no propaganda. And the New York Times and Fox News and AIPAC and all other organs of lie will have been evaporated into nonexistence.
God is just.
Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine
I realize that the title of this article might offend and provoke many people, especially those adhering to the Judaic faith. I do know that Jews, like everyone else, are not carbon copies of each other. There are many conscientious Jews who believe in fairness and basic human equality regardless of color, race and faith, and strongly reject racism and chauvinism in any form. Also, I will no longer be using euphemistic language in reference to Jewish Nazism especially in light of the latest Dresden-like bombing of Gaza by the Judeo-Nazi state also known as Israel.
These people I salute for their rectitude, humanity and morality. They are our natural partners for peace and a better tomorrow for our children and their children.
But there are numerous other Jews who don’t believe in human equality and justice for all. Indeed, there are many Jews, e.g. followers of the hateful Chabad sect, who don’t even ascribe full humanity to people who are not members of the Jewish faith.
Needless to say, the venomous ideology adopted by these racist fanatics has much in common with Aryan Nazism.
What else can be said to describe an ideology that teaches adherents that the life of a non-Jew has no sanctity and that goyem can be murdered without the slightest compunction or feeling of guilt?
The shocking reactions by the Israeli government, rabbis, and community leaders to the latest abduction, murder and subsequent burning of a Palestinian kids in Gaza are very telling.
In a certain sense, these reactions and attitudes can be compared to the reactions and attitudes of many Germans to the pogroms carried out against Jews by the Nazis prior to and during the Second World War.
The gleefully despicable embrace of the brashly hideous crime by the bulk of the Israeli Jewish society underscores the fact that millions of Jews in Israel and abroad do harbor certain Nazi tendencies, especially against the Palestinian people. These tendencies are too real and too tangible to be overstated.
However, we must call the spade a spade, even at the expense of upsetting the huge Zionist propaganda machine which habitually alters the black into white and the blatant big lie into a “truth” glorified by sheepish westerners who have long been brainwashed into believing that Israel is a modern, civilized and democratic state.
In the final analysis, when Jews (or anyone else) think, behave and act like the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, they simply become Nazis. Pure and simple.
Today, there are numerous Jews who openly call for the physical annihilation of Palestinians as retaliation for the abduction and killing of three Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Saber-rattling rabbis speak menacingly of the need to adopt “the Biblical way” to combat the Palestinians.
For those not versed in Jewish phraseology, “Biblical way” is euphemism for genocide.
Today, the Israeli media reported that some army personnel openly appealed to the government to “give us the green light to annihilate them.”!!!
Just read what thousands of Jewish youths have been writing on their Facebook pages! It is outrageous, disgusting and sheer evil.
To put it in a nutshell, Nazism is being regurgitated and exuded all over Israel. This is happening in broad daylight while professional liars like Binyamin Netanyahu are filling the ether with all sorts of shameless lies about Israel being victimized by the Palestinians.
Seventy-six years have passed since Kristalnacht. Today Jewish settlers in the west Bank, in close cooperation and coordination, with the Israeli army could very well carry out a huge pogrom against an innocent and helpless community which really finds itself very much in the same precarious and vulnerable position that European Jewry experienced prior to WWII.
I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but the signs are unmistakably bleak.
A final point, the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are surviving thanks to the good-will of the international public opinion. Should the international community go into a brief slumber, God forbid, Israel and its own Wehrmacht, SS, Gestapo and Hitler Youth might embark on the unthinkable. Don’t you ever say Jews can’t carry out a holocaust against their victims, the Palestinians?
Words can kill; words do kill.
Unfortunately, the chilling words we are hearing from many Israeli Jews these days leave no room for optimism.
Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine
In-your-face brutality, unending genocide, unending atrocities, mass slaughter directed against one’s people, one’s brethren, causes the most strong and unimaginable reaction, in response to the oppressor’s horrendous and barbaric deeds. The autocratic, despotic, tyrannical Israeli-hand systematically and with pre-planned engineered precision, massacres, annihilates, eliminates the young and the old Palestinian alike – in the most inhumane and most despicable of ways. Slaughters men, women and children in broad daylight. Bares its blood-thirsty intentions, its monstrous objectives in the most unashamed of ways. Mercy to none – not to the living, not to the severely wounded and dying; no mercy even on the dead or their lifeless remains.
The constant fear of being bombed anytime, rained down with missiles and all manner of munitions from within the vast arsenal of the Israeli side; definitely stockpiled high, with enough buffer inventory of munitions, deadly and lethal stockpile, to blow the receiving side multiple times over; so as not to leave a “shred” of evidence of your original physical-self on the surface of the land, which your people, generations and generations of your ancestors, since time immemorial have dwelt on.
The inexplicable terror of seeing Israeli drones constantly “floating about” unopposed, in the skies above your unsheltered head. Drones with eyes like that of a greedy dog. Electronic pixels wanting to cast an evil eye, an evil-spell upon your very being. Eyeing upon your existence, wanting to blow-up, tear-up your physical being, seemingly wanting to devour your flesh and body; all by way of a few computer clicks / even the manual computer-clicks now, seemingly, are being replaced by more automated ways of executing these most evil deeds. Software, coded software, written programs to execute on the most Evil-intentions. Evil-intentions of the most evil amongst the human race.
Everybody knows, the Israelis have exterminated with their weaponry, uncountable numbers of Palestinians across a 40, 50km stretch of land, in front of the whole world, over the past so many weeks and months. And retain the capacity, the ability, the power, the means to slaughter, devour many, many more innocent ones, day in, day out.
The Israelis possess American technology, American weapons – the bedrock of their faith, the foundation stone of their belief in their never-ending invincibility. The Palestinians have their faith in Allah; that Allah will redeem his faithful people, from the clutches of these war-mongers, who rain down terror, day and night on the most innocent, the most vulnerable.
Most definitely, the Moslem spirit in me, the Palestinian spirit in me is not defeated; quite to the contrary, it’s rekindled, stronger than ever.
I’m definitely Palestinian, in every sense of the word, and Allah will save us, Allah will have mercy on us, Allah will guide us.
(Note: Azhaar Amayreh is a marketer stuck in war-ravaged Rafah with her child.)The following article is part of a campaign to raise money to help MZEMO contributor Azhaar Amayreh and her family leave Gaza. Please give what you can.