13 Mar 14 | News and features, United Arab Emirates
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
On 3 March 2011 a group of Emirati intellectuals sent a petition to the country’s rulers that politely requested democratic reform and political participation. Authorities have responded by spending the past three years jailing and torturing those who supported the petition. Now citizens are using social media platforms to criticise security services for growing levels of repression with authorities responding in kind by arresting and torturing them.
Since punitive legislation governing use of the internet was passed in November 2012 at least six people have been sent to prison for comments made on Twitter. The latest to be convicted are Khalifa Rabeiah and Othman al-Shehhi who were both sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay fines of £81,875 on 10 March for criticising security services on Twitter.
The story for these two men has become a predictable one for those who dare to criticise authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). They were arrested on 24 July and spent at least six months detained at an unknown location where they say officers tortured them and denied them access to a lawyer. Their families desperately sought information about the reason for their detention but were told by the attorney general’s office that no warrant had been issued for their arrest, so they could not help.
The only available information about their arrest came from the government-linked television channel 24.ae, which broadcast a report analysing Rabeiah’s Twitter account. They accused him of sedition based on his use of hashtags that demonstrated support for jailed political prisoners. There is no information detailing the offending comments made by al-Shehhi, although he used the same hashtags as Rabeiah on his account.
Both men are members of al-Islah, an organisation linked with calls for political reform, and used Twitter to show solidarity with jailed members of their colleagues. The hashtag they used most, “Free Emirates”, has been active for the past three years since the authorities began to arrest political activists with a particular focus on members of al-Islah.
As authorities continue to arrest people for comments made on social media this crackdown increasingly resembles a rather frightening incarnation of Whac-A-Mole. Immediately after news was released of these latest convictions hashtags sprang up in support of both men, with Twitter users criticising security services and calling for political prisoners to be released.
It is clear that repression is fuelling dissent and with repression on the rise criticism will only increase in its intensity. These men may be deprived of their means to criticise but their jailing has sparked a wave of renewed anger at security services. Each arrest, every allegation of torture and the conclusion of more political show trials simply serves to make the problem more complicated and unsolvable for authorities.
Even the international community has started to take notice of what is happening in the UAE. Following a country visit in January a United Nations (UN) expert published a report calling for an investigation into torture and described the country’s judiciary as being under the control of the executive. The security services might not be able to arrest the UN representative but it is unlikely she will be allowed to visit again, as is the case for several Human Rights Watch employees who were banned from the country earlier in the year.
Khalifa Rabeiah and Othman al-Shehhi spoke out on Twitter because political activists were being tortured and subjected to unfair trials. In so doing they suffered the same fate, becoming two more names on a lengthening list of political prisoners. It is unclear how this crackdown will conclude but it is increasingly apparent that the threat of imprisonment has failed to prevent people from criticising repression and with each new arrest authorities create many more political opponents.
This article was posted on March 13 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
29 Jan 14 | News and features, United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates stand accused of blocking criticism over their human rights record, according to international monitoring group Human Rights Watch.
Each year the organisation publishes a global assessment of human rights. This year marked their 24th annual review and summarised key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events from the end of 2012 to November 2013. The work is available for free from their website.
The report contained a 1,400 word chapter about United Arab Emirates, criticising the country for abuses carried out against migrant workers, womens rights, use of torture, arbitrary detention, a poor justice system and lack of political freedom.
Following its publication online, Mohammed Ahmed Al Murr, Speaker of UAE’s Federal National Council (FNC), denounced the report, telling a government meeting:
“It involves many fallacies that are not based on any foundation and contradict several other international organisations’ statements, which testify to the significant progress achieved by the UAE and its honourable record in various areas of human rights.”
His criticisms were published by the state news agency on 22nd January 2014.
That same day, a press event in Dubai was cancelled unexpectedly, when staff at the Novotel hotel told Human Rights Watch that a government permit to hold the event had not been obtained.
“The staff were nervous, they’d been put in a difficult position,” explained Nick McGeehan, Middle East Researcher for Human Rights Watch, who was due to speak at the event.
“They told us that our event had to be cancelled, because a permit had not been obtained.”
“So I asked “If I get this permit, can we run the event?” Then they told me that the room had already been given away to someone else. That’s when we realised the event had probably been prevented from going ahead by someone in the government,” McGeehan told Index on Censorship.
The launch of the report had been accompanied by a series of press conferences, kicking off in Berlin then covering Moscow, London, Sao Paolo, Washington DC, Jakarta and Johanesburg, as well as Tripoli, Sanaa, Kuwait City and Amman. Dubai was the only location where the press conference was not allowed to take place.
Human Rights Watch say they’ve held several news conferences in Dubai since 2005, without any requirement for an advance government permit. They also say they haven’t been able to find information about such laws or permit requirements from their research.
In February 2012, at the last Human Rights Watch news conference in Dubai, people who identified themselves as UAE government employees interrupted the event, stating that a permit was required. Following this incident, Human Rights Watch wrote to Shaikh Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai to request clarification, but say they received no reply.
“Blocking Human Rights Watch from holding a news conference in the UAE sadly underscores the increasing threat to freedom of expression in the country,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement issued on Human Rights Watch website. She was preparing for a planned trip to Dubai in just a few days.
“If the UAE wants to call itself a global media center, it needs to show that it respects freedom of speech and the open expression of critical ideas, not shut down media events,” she added.
Her statement was issued on 22 January – two days later she was barred from entering the country when she landed at Dubai airport for the start of a two day tour.
Whitson has traveled to the UAE on numerous occasions. An ex-Goldman Sachs lawyer who attended Harvard Law School in the same class as Barack Obama, she has conducted several human rights missions in the Middle East, including examining the impact of war and sanctions on the Iraqi civilian population, elections in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and human rights issues in southern Lebanon.
Whitson’s boss, Kenneth Roth, stepped in when he heard news of her rejection at the border.
“These petty tactics by the UAE authorities only demonstrate the government’s intolerance of free speech and fear of critical discussion,” he said.
“Human Rights Watch will continue to document abuses in the UAE and to urge the government to comply with its most basic human rights obligations.”
In contrast to her reception in Dubai – Whitson went on to Yemen, where she meet with the transition government and had, according to the state news agency, a “fruitful” meeting. Human Rights Watch also levelled strong criticism at the Yemeni authorities in their annual report, accusing them of “failing to address multiple human rights challenges.”
Unable to hold the event as planned, Nick McGeehan stayed on for a day to was pulled aside by customs officials as he left Dubai, and told he had been permanently “blacklisted.” His colleague Tamara Alrifai, Advocacy and Communications director for the Middle East and North Africa division, who had also been scheduled to speak at the event, was told the same. The parting words from the customs officials, polite but firm, were allegedly “You are not welcome in my country.”
Human Rights Watch is an independent, nongovernmental organization, supported by contributions from private individuals and foundations worldwide. It accepts no government funds, directly or indirectly, and although based in the US, has been fiercely critical over issues such as Guantanamo Bay and the “war on drugs.” It also maintains offices all over the world and works closely with local activists.
This article was published on 29 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
28 Nov 13 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features, United Arab Emirates
An American citizen is being held in a maximum-security prison in the United Arab Emirates after posting a satirical YouTube video. He is the first foreign national to be charged with the country’s draconian cybercrimes decree.
Shezanne Cassim (29) posted a mock documentary spoofing youth culture in Dubai. For this he has been charged, among other things, with violating Article 28 of the cybercrimes law. This bans using “information technology to publish caricatures that are ‘liable to endanger state security and its higher interests or infringe on public order’” and is punishable by jail time and a fine of up to 1 million dirhams ($272,000). The video was posted on 10 October last year, and the law only came into force over a month later, on on 12 November.
Cassim, an American citizen who moved to Dubai 2006, was arrested on 7 April this year and had his passport confiscated. A trial date has not yet been set, and a spokesperson for his family says he has been denied bail on three occasions. He is currently being held in al-Wathba prison in Abu Dhabi, together with a number of other foreign nationals who took part in the video but who wish to remain anonymous.
Rori Donaghy, Director of the Emirates Centre for Human rights said in a statement that the case has “worrying implications for all expatriates living and working in the UAE.”
“Cassim has been thrown in prison for posting a silly video on YouTube and authorities must immediately release him as he has clearly not endangered state security in any way.”
21 Nov 13 | News and features, United Arab Emirates
Waleed al-Shehhi (Image @uae_detainees)
The measure of an effective police state is one where violence is used sparingly and fear is saturated across the population. A regime attempting to achieve this is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where a series of show trials and convictions against online activists highlight an authoritarian regime’s attempts to quell growing dissent among a repressed citizenry.
On Monday, 18 Nov, Waleed al-Shehhi was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 500,000 dirhams (£84,600) for using Twitter to question the handling of a political trial by authorities. He was convicted of violating the Cybercrimes Decree, which was passed in November 2012 and outlaws the use of information technology to, among other things, criticise actions of the state.
The cybercrimes decree has been decried as a piece of legislation that restricts free speech. It does not function as a piece of legislation, however, but as a strategically deployed tool to warn citizens of topics that are not acceptable discussion points. In the case of Waleed al-Shehhi, the redline topic was his questioning of authorities’ failure to investigate allegations of torture against political prisoners.
Al-Shehhi is the second person to be convicted of violating the cybercrimes decree, with the first, Abdulla al-Hadidi, recently released after serving a 10-month prison sentence. In the case of al-Hadidi, he was convicted of ‘spreading false information’ about a trial of political dissidents from which foreign media and international human rights groups were barred from attending. The redline topic in this instance was the spreading of information the state wished to keep secret; namely, the torture of political prisoners and details of a trial described by the International Commission of Jurists as “manifestly unfair”.
In both cases the online activists have been convicted of discussing a political trial. In the same way that the cybercrimes decree has been used strategically, authorities have accused those deemed most likely to be the source of a challenge to their autocratic power of seditious crimes.
After a petition was sent to the president in March 2011 calling for an accountable parliament, authorities prosecuted 5 liberal activists for insulting the rulers. After this, there was a trial of 94 political activists accused of attempting to ‘seize power’. There is also an ongoing trial of 30 Egyptians and Emiratis accused of establishing an illegal branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Each trial has been marred by accusations of torture, arbitrary detention and a severe lack of due legal process.
However, as the Emirati authorities are finding out, the problem with arresting online and political activists is that with each unfair trial several, new Twitter accounts pop up to criticise the state. Whilst many citizens will be frightened of criticising authorities, there are others who remain steadfast in their commitment to expose the inequities of the state. Although the internet faces many challenges in meeting its emancipatory expectation, for those who are using it to challenge authoritarian regimes it remains a platform that their oppressors cannot fully co-opt. The UAE is trying hard to stamp out even the mildest form of dissent, but the paradigmatic shortcomings of a pre-internet police state theory have rendered their efforts a failure. As Dr. Christopher Davidson, author of After the Sheikhs, says: “the recent introduction of very punitive anti-free speech legislation, often specific to difficult-to-censor cyber activities such as social media, is being used to put people off spreading wider discussion of these human rights abuses in an arena that the authorities are ultimately unable to police”.
Active Twitter hash-tags ensure that debate of repression in the UAE remains vibrant. There is already an active discussion about the imprisonment of Waleed al-Shehhi and an 18-month long discussion calling for political prisoners to be freed continues unabated. As long as authorities allow citizens free access to social media websites their legislative attempts to silence dissent are likely to be futile. Indeed, should the day come when they deem it necessary to block such platforms, it could spark widespread civil disobedience in a country that has largely avoided the upheaval of the Arab Spring.
This article was originally posted on 21 Nov 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
