Human Rights and the UAE: Elderly people arrested for opinion without mercy in USE
Hundreds of people are arrested by the ruling regime in the UAE, on the grounds of opinion and demanding reforms and freedoms, among them elderly people over the age of sixty.
Detainees, especially the elderly, face the threat of infection with the new coronavirus, whose danger is close to everyone without exception, and prisons are not immune to the spread of this virus inside it.
Human rights institutions have repeatedly called on the UAE regime to end of the detention of activists and human rights defenders who are accumulated in prisons.
Hundreds of prisoners of conscience are held in the UAE prisons, including lawyers, professors, academics, students, judges, writers, and activists.
All of them were arrested on charges related to freedom of expression and were subjected to unfair sentences of 15 years after mock trials that lack all fair trial standards that all human rights conventions agree upon.
Today, the world is facing the spread of a highly infectious “killer” virus, and all governments are keen to protect their people from its danger and take several measures to limit its spread, as well as the Emirati authorities to reduce the number of infected people.
It should be remembered in this regard that prisoners, especially prisoners of conscience, are part of the people that should be protected because the risk of the virus does not differentiate between anyone and may find their way to prisons at any moment, and then things get out of control.
With experts in the medical field confirming that older persons are among the most vulnerable groups to the coronavirus, we find that dozens of prisoners of conscience in the prisons of the UAE have exceeded the age of 60 years and are serving unfair sentences because of the defense of human rights and in addition to their aging.
They complain of chronic diseases such as diabetes, pressure, kidney disease and other health problems that are exacerbated by the lack of medical follow-up.
About 19 of the prisoners of conscience in the Emirates prisons are over sixty years of age, including Dr. Sultan bin Kayed Muhammad Al Qasimi, the lawyer Dr. Muhammad Al Mansoori, and Professor Hamad Ali Raqeet, who is 70 years old, and Dr. Law Hadef Rashid Rashid Al Owais, and engineer Salem Sahoo Al Suwaidi, And Eng. Ahmed Al-Rostamani, and Professor Hassan Ahmed Al-Hammadi, and others, most of whom carry a chronic disease and its immunity are more fragile than others, which makes it more vulnerable to the threat of Corona virus, which monitors all prisons.
Of concern and fear to the lives of these activists and human rights activists are that they are subjected to ill-treatment and neglect since their arrest, a policy practiced by the UAE authorities against prisoners of conscience in their prisons.
