UAE: Measures under the guise of preventing online crime undermine freedom of expression
The International Center for Justice and Human Rights said that the UAE regime imposes measures to prevent crime on the Internet to undermine freedom of expression, target human rights activists, and suppress reformist opponents.
The centre highlighted that the UAE lacks any improvement in the status of freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of the press and media, without regard to being a fundamental right stipulated by international standards.
The UAE authorities have not changed their arbitrary blocking of many websites, including the Arabic website of Fars News Agency, the British Middle East Eye websiteو Noon Post website, and the website of Al Araby Al Jadeed newspaper in both Arabic and English.
The Swiss Organization for the Protection of Human Rights SPH, other Arab and international websites, civil society organizations, and media websites, including Al-Jazeera, are also blocked.
This made the UAE bottom of the list of countries in the Press Freedom Index (13/180 in the Press Freedom Index for 2022) and a lower rank in the Internet Freedom Index.
The UAE authorities control media content through Resolution No. 23 of 2017 on media content, which prohibits any publication from insulting the state’s ruling system, its symbols and institutions, and the higher interests of the state and society, and publishing what harms national unity and social cohesion, and disrespecting policies.
The UAE also continues to target bloggers and human rights activists for simply criticizing the regime in one of their posts, accusing them of defamation, inciting sedition, sectarianism and hatred on social media, and harming national unity.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession, when she visited the UAE in 2014, emphasized the generality of the federal law on information technology crimes and its violation of the principle of legality, which would open the door to arbitrary interpretation and misuse.
The UAE deliberately tightens surveillance on the Internet, so it focused the Eagle Eye system on penetrating accounts, websites and e-mail and spying on users. For this, it acquired modern technologies and contracted with major companies.
To hack the accounts of opponents inside and outside the UAE, Abu Dhabi commissioned cybernetic mercenaries, who are elements of the American intelligence services, to establish a secret unit in Abu Dhabi called “RAVEN”.
The work of the secret unit RAVEN included monitoring human rights activist Ahmed Mansour before his arrest by the State Security Service in March 2017.
There were numerous violations against journalists and bloggers, which affected their personal safety, physical and psychological deprivation, and their rights and freedoms for posts on social media.
The State Security Apparatus arbitrarily arrested them, forcibly disappeared them, and subjected some of them to torture and ill-treatment. The State Security Department of the Federal Supreme Court ensured their trial without providing them with the necessary guarantees to defend themselves.
Their dignity and rights continued to be violated inside Emirati prisons, such as Al Razeen and Al Wathba prisons, and the refusal to release at least 19 activists after the expiry of their sentences and their detention in counselling centres.
