The Board of Directors of the UAE Writers Union considered the success of the poet and journalist Habib Sayegh in the General Secretariat of the UAE Writers Union as a success for all the intellectuals and innovators in the UAE.

In a statement issued on the occasion, the Board of Directors added that “the successful Arab choice of Habib Sayegh is a success for the UAE in terms of its cultural and creative history, especially in this difficult period of the nation’s history. This nation is being severely confronted by nations and powers that are hostile to the country’s civilization. This choice is considered an Arab recognition of the innovative role of the UAE.”

Observers point out that these powers and nations are not Israel or Iran, but the ideology of the Arab peoples calling for freedom and dignity, who started to take to the streets in 2011 against tyrannical regimes.
Activists ruled out that Sayegh’s victory would be unanimous, especially since strong unions such as the Egyptian, Syrian and Maghreb are a fierce competition for the UAE.

Observers say that, over the past four years, Sayegh has worked to transform the Union to serve the authority in the Arab countries and the authority in Abu Dhabi specifically. These authorities, Arab, Gulf and Emirati no longer hide their ideology that is hostile to the aspirations of the Arab peoples for freedom and dignity on the one hand and works to change the identity of the nation and its culture and linking it to Israel’s acceptance. It is also hostile to the values of freedom, democracy and the anti-human rights concepts and promotes it as the cause of the corruption that has been done in the Arab region since the spring of the Arab Spring. Moreover, it eliminates the counter-revolution from this devastation.

Throughout the four years of Sayegh, for instance, the UAE has played no role in protecting intellectuals and media professionals. Since 2012, dozens of intellectuals have spent years in jail in harsh sentences for practicing their cultural work and freedom of expression.

Last year, the academic and intellectual Nasser bin Ghaith, as well as blogger Ahmad Mansour and the blogger Osama Najjar have been jailed and the authorities refused to release them despite the end their sentence.