Death in exile or prisons… advocates of reform Fate in UAE
The Emirati intellectual and former minister Said Abdullah Salman died in exile in Germany after years of being persecuted by the UAE regime for his call for political and social reform in the country.
Osama Salman said his father died in a hospital in Germany (the Charité Hospital in Berlin) and was supposed to be taken to the UAE.
Saeed Abdullah Salman, one of the figures of the “Reform” movement, which Abu Dhabi dissolved and confiscated, arrested dozens of its leaders and members and handed down harsh sentences on false charges.
According to his close associates, Salman left the UAE with the start of the arrest campaign in early 2012, after he was also stripped from the University of Ajman, which he founded along with Ajman Governor Hamid bin Rashid Al Nuaimi.
The University’s abstraction campaign started from its branch in Abu Dhabi when it was seized by sheiks in the emirate for their own university favor. Ajman University was the main rival, and they wanted to close it down so that Abu Dhabi Private University would remain the only private university to accommodate thousands of students.
According to observers, the commercial objective was one of the reasons behind the closure of Ajman University in Al Ain, before the security apparatus took over the liquidation of the university because its owner and founder are Said Salman, known for his reformist role in the UAE.
Almesbar Studies and Research Center, owned the Abu Dhabi government, said that Saeed Abdullah Salman was one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UAE.
The center said that The Muslim Brotherhood in the UAE was able to participate in one cabinet minister in the first government formation in 1971. Saeed Abdullah Salman was appointed Minister of Housing by the nomination of Vice President Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum.
Salman has held other government positions, such as the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, the UAE’s first ambassador to Paris, the European market in Brussels and a member of UNESCO’s Executive Board in two consecutive sessions.
In the third government formation in 1979, Salman took over the Ministry of Education and the president of the UAE University two years later.
It is noteworthy that about a year after his departure for Germany, Ajman’s ruler, pointed as his vice-president Salman’s son, Osama.
Emirati activists, Saeed Abdullah Salman, mourned that the fate of reformists in the UAE is still between death in exile or in prisons under an authoritarian regime that suppresses all calls for reform in the country.
