American rights organization: UAE is an authoritarian police state
Human Rights in the Emirates – An American human rights organization attacked the ruling regime in the United Arab Emirates for its crimes and violations against human rights, and its efforts to spread chaos and destruction in many Arab and European countries.
Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain, described in a report published on its website, the UAE as a despotic police state, where the laws of censorship of the media and spying on citizens are widespread.
The organization said that the ambiguity of its laws allows rulers to justify their crushing of dissidents and silence the voice of government critics. Impunity has become an epidemic in the Emirates, due to the widespread culture of exemption from accountability at the highest levels of government.
The human rights organization referred to one of these practices, which is the “scandal” that exposed Dubai ruler, Prime Minister and Deputy President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, after he sent threats to his former wife, Princess Haya, which prompted the British court to issue a decision to secure special protection for her and her children.
She stated that torture in the Emirates is used systematically in detention centers to extract confessions and testimonies from detainees, without any accountability for those who practice it.
She said that the torture record in the UAE confirms that the government uses these methods against everyone it considers a threat, and the threat here usually includes human rights defenders, political opponents, religious figures, and journalists.
In addition, while seeking to eliminate any dissenting voice, the UAE allows members of the security services to enjoy unlimited powers to punish the families of activists, whether they are imprisoned or live abroad.
The UAE authorities intransigently released the prisoners of conscience in their prisons, who ended their sentences, although some of them completed his sentence for more than three years.
According to human rights organizations, the number of political detainees in Emirati prisons amounted to 107, including two women (Amina Al-Abdouli and Maryam Al-Balushi).
The human rights organization pointed to the suffering of British researcher Matthew Hedges, who was charged with espionage and thrown in the Emirates prisons for a period of six months. This researcher was subjected to inhuman conditions of detention.
The organization considered that, despite all these violations, the UAE continues its practices without fear of any consequences in its relationship with other countries. For example, everyone might expect that London will review its distinguished relationship with Abu Dhabi, but this did not happen, as Britain continues to encourage businessmen to invest in Emirati companies, despite the fact that the judicial conditions in this country make investing in it a great risk.
Britain also continues to cooperate with the UAE in the sale of arms despite the inhuman treatment this British citizen has been subjected to.
The organization added that Britain is not the only country that condones the culture of human rights violations prevalent in the Emirates, but that the United States also refuses to review its economic relations with this country. In May 2019, the administration of US President Donald Trump agreed to sell a new $8 billion in arms shipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as part of an urgent deal aimed at supporting Washington’s allies in the region.
This deal took place despite the fact that the UAE used torture against detainees, and supplied Al-Qaeda groups with American weapons, and these weapons were also used to purchase the loyalty of militias known to have committed human rights violations.
In 2019, the UAE represented the largest US arms export market in the Middle East and North Africa, with more than a thousand American companies operating in the country. Also, many other companies benefit from the logistics and transportation networks in the Emirates, and use their lands as a main hub for conducting their business in the Middle East and North Africa and parts of Asia.
