Ex-UN official slams UAE as ‘dark police state’ over gross human rights violations

A former UN human rights official has slammed the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a “dark police state” where there are gross violations of freedom of expression and abuse of migrant workers.

The UAE “is a dark police state, it’s a state where there are violations of the right of freedom of expression, where there is torture, where there is abuse of migrant domestic workers,"Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, a former secretary with the UN Human Rights Committee, said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.

“I’m particularly concerned about the failure of the mainstream media to thematize this, to actually focus on the failure of the United States and of Europe to enforce resolutions of the General Assembly and of the Human Rights Council … or the criticism that we’ve heard about the abduction of children, of [Dubai's ruler] Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum, about the fate of [his daughter] princess Latifa, etc.,” he added.

Princess Latifa Al Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai's ruler, has been famously held “hostage” in the UAE, drawing worldwide condemnations leveled at Abu Dhabi over the mistreatment and restrictions imposed by her own family. She attempted to escape from Dubai in February 2018, but the escape went wrong, with her father later saying that he considered this a "rescue mission."

The remarks by De Zayas came after the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders called on the UAE to immediately release five human rights defenders who have been held in harsh conditions in the country’s prisons for eight years.

“Their sentences were excessively severe and their detentions have been declared arbitrary according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” Mary Lawlor said on Friday.

Mohamed al-Mansoori, Hassan Mohammed al-Hammad, Hadif Rashed Abdullah al-Owais, Ali Saeed al-Kindi and Salim Hamdoon al-Shahhi are part of a group of 94 lawyers, human rights defenders and academics who were sentenced to 10 years in jail in July 2013 for plotting to dispose the ruling regime.

“They should have never been detained in the first place for legitimately exercising the freedoms that all people are entitled to,” Lawlor added.

UN special rapporteur urges UAE to free five ‘arbitrary’ detained rights activists

A UN special rapporteur calls on the UAE to immediately free five human rights defenders who have been imprisoned in harsh conditions.

The US-allied UAE shows little tolerance for criticism and peaceful dissent. Throughout the years, international human rights groups have repeatedly called on Abu Dhabi to release political prisoners jailed in the Persian Gulf country.

De Zayas said Lawlor is a very serious special rapporteur and that what she has said is correct and has been endorsed by the working group on arbitrary detention.

“It’s not only she who put out the press release, it was co-signed by the working group on arbitrary detention, it was co-signed by the special rapporteur on the right of freedom of peaceful assembly … and it was also signed by the rapporteur on torture,” he told Press TV.

He also maintained that the problem with international law, in particular international human rights law, is the lack of enforcement.

The US and European powers “maintain this very close relationship with Saudi Arabia, with Bahrain, with the United Arab Emirates, notwithstanding the fact that these countries systematically violate” a number of articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, de Zayas remarked.

Human rights group lodges ‘torture’ complaint at Paris court against UAE official

An independent human rights group files a complaint at a Paris court against a senior UAE official over torture of prominent human rights activists and dissident Ahmed Mansoor.

On the other hand, he continued, the unilateral coercive measures are targeting Belarus, Venezuela, Iran and Cuba, while there’s a whole number of super-rich countries that get away with all sorts of gross violations of human rights.

Pointing to human rights violations of the members of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the human rights expert said there is “no outcry on the part of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the CNN and the BBC” when such violations occur.

Meanwhile, an independent London-based human rights group has lodged a complaint in France against a top Emirati official, accusing him of being responsible for the torture of prominent pro-democracy campaigner and rights activist Ahmed Mansoor.

The [Persian] Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) filed its complaint against Major General Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi, inspector general at the UAE Interior Ministry, at a Paris court earlier in the week.

The complaint states that Raisi, who is a member of Interpol's executive committee, is responsible for “torture and barbaric acts” against Mansoor.

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