Analysis: UAE attempts to improve its reputation won’t save its unknown future

The United Arab Emirates faces an unknown future in the light of its regime’s reckless policies while the country’s attempts to improve its reputation cannot be guaranteed by hiding behind brilliant slogans.

It is known that societies lose their ability to face threats under the authority of the official propaganda and cover the events and crimes with a flood of lies and methods of improving reputation.

It is clear that the UAE is slowly sinking into an external and more reprehensible war, as well as repression and political judgments in the worst record in the region in terms of fighting opinion and expression and creating a climate of fear and intimidation of censorship and repressive laws.

In the light of the charged atmosphere in the Arab region and in the Gulf, in particular, the human rights issues represent the easiest equation for connecting peoples instead of creating a “populist” situation that aims at theorizing and improving the state’s facade to hide this rampant repression. Internal grievances must be addressed to confront the external enemy, Iran, its tools and plans.

Without dealing with human rights, grievances and violations, confronting external enemies and foreign terrorist organizations make the loss inevitable, which the UAE faces as a result of the practices of its regime.

The community in the UAE is living in fear of retaliation by the security services and the authorities, so how can it be directed or even supported in the context of a climate of identity theft and questioning of citizenship?

States begin to rise and stabilize when they support societies, peoples, because the defeatist spirit in the lives of peoples expect power in mistakes, and this spirit has been oppressed in the past years in the UAE. Without facing the mistakes of society, the state will be unable to face the dangers it faces. At that time, the state will be in a difficult place to return from and it will not be easy to correct the impact of those mistakes.

Human Rights Watch has sharply criticized the UAE for honoring Arab social media activists at the Arab Social Media Influences Summit in Dubai on December 11 because of human rights abuses.

“The conference celebrates the role of influences on social media in Dubai, while the real influences are imprisoned in the UAE because of publications on Facebook.” the organization said.

“Will they distribute a “How To Tweet Without Going To Jail” booklet to the participants?”

The organization said in a statement: “The UAE government repression has escalated since 2011, against the freedom of expression and association, the detention and prosecution of peaceful critics and political opponents, human rights activists and academics arbitrarily.”

“The UAE invests a great deal of time and money to portray itself as a progressive and tolerant country, but it is, in fact, an authoritarian who lacks the basic respect for the rule of law,” the organization said.

The United Nations Office for Human Rights has called on the UAE to release activist Ahmed Mansoor, who on January 11, 2019, upheld a 10-year prison term for criticizing the government for social networking sites, a widely criticized event.

In addition, the American Society of International Law hosted in Washington, January 15, a seminar on human rights violations in the United Arab Emirates, at the joint invitation of the American Society and No Peace Without Justice.

The conference discussed the challenges facing human rights and the rule of law within the UAE, which concluded that they are systematically committed in the country in the light of arrests, detention and the judicial system.

The second session discussed the attempt to arrest British academic Matthew Hedges, who was among the speakers and discussed the similar human rights abuses committed by Abu Dhabi in Yemen-run prisons.