Torture, arrests, and espionage… a continuous decline in the state of civil liberties in the UAE
The human rights organization, CIVICUS, revealed the “contradiction” between the tolerance discourse promoted by the UAE authorities globally and their “sad record of suppressing and imprisoning human rights defenders” amid a continuous decline in the state of civil liberties in the country.
The organization said that the Dubai Expo, which continues until the end of this month, clearly reflects the blatant contradiction in the tolerance discourse in the UAE.
Government officials use the event to promote the rhetoric that the Gulf country supports values of “tolerance” and “openness” in an attempt to obscure the local track record of prosecuting hundreds of independent lawyers, judges, journalists, teachers, students, and activists.
The report indicated that the exhibition coincides with the tenth anniversary of the arrest and arbitrary detention of a group of pro-democracy activists in the UAE 94 case.
The UAE authorities arbitrarily imprison them in Al-Razeen maximum security prison for signing a petition calling for political reform.
The organization stated that 4 political detainees are still imprisoned despite the end of their sentences, noting that 3 of them, Abdullah Al-Hajri, Imran Al-Radwan Al-Harthy and Mahmoud Hassan Al-Hosani, ended their prison terms in 2019, while the fourth, Fahd Al-Hajri, completed the sentence in the year 2020.
The report added that the list of detainees in the UAE-94 case serving a 10-year prison sentence includes human rights lawyers Dr Muhammad Al-Roken and Dr Muhammad Al-Mansoori and the preacher Muhammad Abdul Razzaq Al-Siddiq, the father of the late Emirati activist Alaa Al-Siddiq.
The report also noted that the authorities are still detaining activists Ahmed Mansoor and Dr Nasser bin Ghaith after being arrested and subsequently imprisoned for their online activities in 2015 and 2017.
According to the report, torture has been widely documented in UAE prisons, warning of fears of its global practice, following the election of the Emirati government official, Ahmed Nasser Al Raisi, as head of the international organization Interpol, noting that Al Raisi “is accused of supervising cases of torture”.
The report criticized the newly adopted UAE Anti-Rumor and Cybercrime Law, adding that it criminalizes the work of journalists, whistleblowers, and activists and uses broad terminology to give authorities excessive discretion that enables them to impose long prison sentences and criminalize individuals who exercise their right to freedom of expression online.
According to the report, the authorities have increased their monitoring of human rights defenders inside and outside the UAE. The government is using the Pegasus spy program to hack the phone of a civil rights activist and subsequently imprison him.
The report recommends that the UAE authorities immediately and unconditionally release all those arbitrarily detained for their peaceful human rights work and stop targeting human rights defenders and other individuals who peacefully exercise their right to expression.
He also called on the authorities to review Federal Law No. 43 of 2021 on combating rumours and cybercrime and stop using spyware and surveillance technologies to target opponents and activists.
