Arab novelist exposes UAE violations in a festival in Abu Dhabi
The Egyptian novelist, Ahdaf Soueif, exposed during her appearance at the opening festival in Abu Dhabi, the human rights violations in the UAE and arbitrary arrests, based on opinion.
During her intervention at the festival, Soueif told the audience that it would have been possible for two Emirati human rights activists to have been present if they had not been unjustly imprisoned.
The novelist, who founded the Palestinian Literature Festival in 2008, said she wanted to talk about those “who lost their freedom simply because they insisted on their right to freedom of expression and their support for human rights principles.”
Soueif especially referred to the detainees in the UAE because of the exercise of their right to freedom of expression, the poet and activist Ahmed Mansoor and the judge Mohammed Al-Roken.
