Why the Arrest of a Lebanese Doctor Should Terrify Every Visitor to the UAE
insidearabia.com
insidearabia.com
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2021/03/23/cri...
According to US state department there have been “ no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex conduct.” since at least 2015.
Is the UAE a dictatorship? Absolutely - the newspaper is censored, and publicly challenging or speaking ill of the government is a Bad Idea that everyone knows not to do.
Is it the autocratic dystopia that the article makes it out to be? Also no; I didn't have any problems during my time there, nor did any friends that I know of (including three gay friends). The UAE is basically caught between both traditional Muslim and Western democratic influences, and it's not strictly one or the other. As long as you're not challenging the government or doing anything Muslims would consider bad taste (e.g. public PDA), you're generally left alone.
Which meant I was surprised to learn about the jailing on account of a joke about the name "Nahyan", until I saw, "Another joke Dr. Kharrat tweeted urged the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to attack Dubai’s Burj Khalifa".
Iran and the UAE _really_ don't like each other, and the UAE maintains a strong security state at least in part because of it. Urging a Houthi attack on the Burj Khalifa would be taken very seriously, and I'd surmise 1) he ended up on a watchlist when he first made it and 2) the UAE is now using him as political pressure on Lebanon.
To be clear, I'm not at all condoning the UAE's actions here as they don't align with my personal values. That said, I'm not surprised: the UAE takes perceived threats to the state very seriously and doesn't claim to allow free speech, so Kharrat was doing a (from an Emirati perspective) Very Bad Thing that most visitors to the UAE aren't likely to.
They have been running a lot of PR campaigns about how modern they are.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=uae+son...
https://gulfnews.com/uae/sonapur-welcome-to-the-dark-side-1....
You go to prison for this in Dubai.
> have their password taken away
I suppose you mean “passport”. This is also illegal, government has been cracking down on this for years. The MOHRE hotline for these issues is advertised everywhere, it only takes a quick call and the police will come recover your passport.
But yeah, I guess it’s pointless to try and have a conversation with someone engaging as dishonestly as you.
I obviously don’t mean that violence or rape are okay, and it’s really shitty of you to suggest that. What next? Will you accuse me of molesting children too?
Many people crying about "slavery in Dubai" don't fully understand what slavery is and how Dubai works. What I am suggesting here, is that, perhaps, this notion is just a second-hand opinion you should consider changing your mind about. If you are open to it, that is.
UAE is doing more to improve the lives of these people than the West ever has, even if it doesn’t look all that pretty. It’s very unfortunate that photos of denied visa applications will never evoke the same response.
It is illegal to do this, enforcement is pretty aggressive.
As to denial of visas? At least the UAE offers these people a chance at a better life, Western countries give them nothing. A slight QOL improvement is much better than none.
To get a low-skilled work visa in Dubai you have to sit through an hour long lecture explaining these rights, including what to do if your employer takes your passport.
You are advised to not give your passport to your employer except to have your visa stamped, and then immediately demand it back.
This country is modernizing very rapidly, things that were true 5 years ago are often not true anymore.
I'm drawing the line at the confiscated passports, threat of jail and terrible living conditions - if you can't safely leave your work, you're a slave. It doesn't matter what the alternative at your home is.
But what do I know? Maybe because I’m in America I can’t call being forced to work and unable to leave slavery cause it’s a second hand opinion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No one confiscates passports, it is a nonsense. But what can I tell a person in America to make them doubt ideas they fixate to? Now go ahead and google up that one case when somebody did confiscate a passport a few decades ago and extrapolate this to all the millions of workers in UAE. You see what I mean?
Confiscate is probably too extreme a word, but when I lived in UAE many employers held onto (e.g. in the office safe) their employees passports. At some point I think the government realized this could be abused, and then there was an centralized office (at least in Jebel Ali, it was different in Abu Dhabi) where your employer asked you to have them hold your passport. To get your passport you had to get a letter from your employer saying it was okay for you to get it. Or, in my case, I left my job and got it back.
Personally, I hated the fact that I had to ask my employer for my passport when I got accepted into Grad school in the US and had to tell my employer I needed it for a few days to get a visa. I never questioned the legality of it though, and according to this it's not legal for employers to force you to hand over your passport.
https://gulfnews.com/uae/find-out-if-your-employer-is-author...
But like most legal things, when you are on a work visa you are scared of anything that might harm that. So you don't challenge or ask questions. It's pretty common for people on H1B to stay at an job they hate even though changing jobs on H1B is supposed to be easy. I certainly stayed at a bad job longer than I wanted to until my green card process hit a certain point. I think legally I could have changed earlier, but the company immigration attorney certainly gaslighted me on many things, and I was just too scared to take any risks with visa stuff. It's easy for a company to exploit that fear.
Admittedly this was 20 years ago and the government was taking steps to prevent it so I could believe the practice has mostly disappeared if given proof, but since we all know illegal behavior continues for a while after laws are enacted and enforced I’d still need to see that proof.
You’re argument about this not being real sounds a lot like when my countrymen claim our legal system doesn’t enslave people despite it being explicitly carved out in the constitution to allow it and prisoners being forced to work. It’s uncomfortable to face the truths but just claiming it’s the same in the face of evidence doesn’t help
Somebody with an agenda told you "Dubai slavery" long time ago and it is now easier for you to follow the narrative formed in your head. I get it, but the reality is different.
I keep finding facts that support this view because the facts are still there. Why are you acting like this isn’t real at all? I even asked for some evidence that this is no longer occurring which I could believe given the UAE government has taken steps to combat it, but you just want to call people flat earthers.
At this point the only one who seems to have an agenda is you and your attempts to shut down any conversation around the topic
However, it is also true that too many of those migrant workers are then treated atrociously, with little legal recourse, and with a casual chauvinism and racism that far exceeds what is often labeled "racism" in progressive societies.
And that is particularly grating given that those oil-rich countries could afford not only fancy buildings and museums, but also decent labour standards.
> Should Indian and Pakistani companies pay more to Indian and Pakistani workers they bring to Dubai?
Yes indeed.
> Who do you think should dictate how much more Indian companies should pay [...]?
As usual, the government of the country they operate in. In this case, the UAE governments. It would probably mean somewhat more expensive buildings for the UAE, and somewhat less profits for said Indian and Pakistani companies.
What should change in this scenario so you would stop calling this a "slavery"?
Many people who have enough leisure time to spend on HN and Reddit just don't understand the conditions many people grow up in. Not just India and Pakistan, but Philippines, Indonesia, and all the countries where you see economic migrants to any gulf country. Imagine growing up in unbelievable poverty with no educational opportunities or support, and with the external and internal pressure to financially support your siblings, parents, family and so they can survive and not just repeat the cycle you were born into.
It's an insane situation, and the only solution humans seem to have come up with is to encourage people with money buy stuff that's made by people who cannot afford that same stuff. In one country it's tall buildings, in another it's phones and t-shirts.
Global wealth inequality issues are certainly not easy to solve, but we don't just need to shrug and say "I guess that's the way the world needs to work" - there is an extreme amount of excess in western countries, we've got several people who have literally nothing better to do with their money than launch private rockets into space for PR so I don't think it's fair to say "it's near- slavery or t-shirts".
As the wealthiest nation on earth and the never-sated consumer that drives most of the world's economy America is in a position where it can demand better working conditions, it can say t-shirts at walmart can't reasonably cost 5$... but it is choosing not to do so. And, with all that said, the UAE in it's (hopefully now in the past) passport seizing days was still far worse.
Honestly, when I lived in UAE I had to submit my passport to a centralized system that held the passports of people who worked in that commercial area. To this day I don't know if I had to legally give them my passport or if my employer simply encouraged me to do it and presented it to me as as if I didn't have a choice.
A few weeks ago I had to take a sick family member to the emergency room here in the US at 3AM because they vomited blood. All medical resources online said it could not wait till morning as it could be internal bleeding. They were given an X-ray, an external exam by a nurse and a doctor, and told that it was a mild adverse reaction to some common medication and to swap to something else. Nothing to worry about. Time from leaving home to back home was 75 minutes, tops. Bill was $3500. My employer only offers HDHP options so a lot of that is on me once the insurance company and hospital are done playing their stupid games.
I think all employers in UAE are required to provide health-insurance. Prior to that, everybody there legally had governmental healthcare, but that has changed as medical costs have risen private insurance has become an option.
Thankfully I have insurance and I work in tech. It hits my budget and stings, I can afford to pay it. But if I didn't have health insurance and had family in my home country who depended on me sending money every month, that bill would have wrecked my life.
I realize passports versus medical benefits is not a sensible comparison at all.
Nobody seems to write stories about how governmental treatment of migrant workers in UAE has improved a lot over the last 2 decades. There's tons of room to improve, but it has gotten better.
These countries have been modernizing so fast that it’s really pointless to talk about how things were a couple of years ago.
2 years ago if someone said that this would happen people would probably have laughed at you https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/courts/2021/11/28/uaes-n...
I reject the premise that we live in a world of unregulated capitalism where free-markets force us all to engage in a race to the bottom when it comes to working conditions, and the modern world also rejects that with a plethora of examples: how can US workers who demand trivial things like sane working hours and health care possibly compete with people overseas who can do the same work while being paid peanuts - it's because we as a society can demand that. The people of the UAE could similarly demand that labourers be paid better and receive better treatment - it's not an unavoidable economic outcome that near slavery exists, it's a choice.
How would you justify this? And what if I ask you to apply the same logic to H1B?
the use of sports and FIFA is an example of this.
*qatar not uae, is the absolute worst place to hold a giant soccer tournament. They have to use special AC units inside giant stadiums (built on deaths of lots of migrant workers) because it's a hot desert. But they claim they are still 'green'
Saudi using art is an example too. They paid a ton of money to use the name Louvre even though their museum has nothing to do with the institution. ironically he refused to loan his $450 million 'da vinci' to the real museum. Evidently sitting on a yacht hidden because good chance it's not by da vinci's hand.
As a queer person who loves to travel (or did before covid) there are some countries i just refuse to visit, despite the awesome cultural heritage. I know that citizens don't always necessarily agree, but many do. And I just can't support the expansion of authoritarianism - and potentially risk my life.
Ummm, Qatar isn't UAE...
It wasn't filmed there. It was filmed in Morocco and they just said it took place in Abu Dhabi. The UAE government said they couldn't film there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_the_City_2#Filming
It might seem like a random topic for me to know, but I lived in UAE for a portion of my life and the government is pretty mindful of having their name associated with some of the themes you'd typically see with that particular TV series. So I was quite surprised when they claimed it was Abu Dhabi, and not surprised that they actually filmed it elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_films_shot_in_...
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7402099
Of course, the torture victim and his brother who released the video were convicted by UAE courts.
Taleb has been hyping this story for weeks.
The fact it gets so much media coverage suggests its rarity. The odds of being detained in uae for social media posts is very low. The UAE gets tons of tourism. Your odds of being roughed up by police in America are higher.
Not saying I agree with anyone getting arrested for silly nonsense. But for 99% of the travelers, it doesn't matter.
- A woman had a glass of wine while flying to UAE on UAE own airline!!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/11/woman-arrest...
- A guy accidentally touches the hip of another guy in a club
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/22/briton-jailed-...
- A non-married couple kissing in a restaurant
https://abcnews.go.com/International/TheLaw/kissing-couple-f...
And on and on and on.
Typically, if you are the citizen of a powerful country (US, UK, EU, ...) they will let you off with a fine.
If you are the citizen of a less powerful country, like this Lebanon doctor, you go to jail.
#2: Sounds like at least one of them was pretty drunk. Men regularly walk hand in had in arab societies, even only holding the pinky! Given that its the same source as #1, I wont hold my breath.
#3 "a simple peck on the cheek" are you kidding me? ever been to Dubai?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_of_Matthew_Hedges
Western governments are as craven in appeasing the UAE and Saudi kleptocracies, because of their wealth, as poor countries like India or Pakistan that hire themselves as mercenaries for the emirs dirty work (like kidnapping princess Latina of Dubai). Calling them medieval would be a grave insult to the Dark Ages.
It can even go beyond the ruling family. There was a US helicopter pilot (IIRC) who wrote something disparaging about his Qatari employer on Facebook while in the United States who was arrested upon his return to Qatar for it.
You have to be aware of the laws of whatever country you're going to and respect them. Ignore them at your own peril. You don't really get to complain it. Your choices are either to go and follow and law and not go. Ignorance is no excuse.
I'd actually be way more wary of taking a job in some of these countries. To leave Qatar, for eample, you need an exit visa. Basically, your employer has to consent. This system is ripe for abuse and has been abused many times. Employers use it to withhold wages in exchange for giving their permission. Personally, I would never work in such a place.
Lots of correlation models that need to be updated as people learn what gets logged as certain sentiment and then they change their language to not be part of that.
Then I realized you might be asking about "how do you identify a sarcastic comment that looks like praise?" ..and it seems there's no easy answer to that.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053951720972735
https://wpmu.mah.se/nmict162group7/?p=180
So I guess after all this, I've gone from my initial sarcastic remark (the top of this post) to 10 mins later scratching my head and thinking that this business idea is more difficult that going back to our government and demanding more change.
And you had been previously critical of the regime.
Now what?
My personal risk tolerance is that which I don’t transit the Middle East, ever, when traveling internationally, and I have no social media usage or presence.
There almost ought to be training in schools on responsible use of the Internet, where topics such as these are covered.
Is the tweet in question. It is worth noting that we’re not sure yet that the tweet is true.
But lets assume it is:
Do people really think that this tweet should be enough to detain/arrest him? People in the US and in Lebanon (most of the world too) make countless of posts vilifying and wishing politicians dead.
The guy is a Christian doctor from Lebanon visiting for tourism/work. He has no impact or connections on houthis.
I also promise there’s countless of Lebanese people with similar or worse tweets visiting UAE.
Putting my conspiracy hat on:
Elections are coming up in Lebanon, arresting this doctor will make major news in Lebanon.
This will illicit two types of reaction there, people will be cheering this person’s arrest or will be cheering for a more hardline stance and distancing against UAE.
There are parties that claim to have good connections to UAE royalty (more like serfs) who will use this to say that this wouldn’t happen under their rule.
Unfortunately, Lebanon is a complete basket case of a country. So many well educated Lebanese are forced to find work in Gulf countries with repressive regimes. They pay well to buy your silence.
Not exactly sure how this doctor got arrested but if they automatically scan feeds on arrival and then process them by strict adherence to law, that is bad.
I'm gonna be honest how can anyone actually think tweeting that is a good idea.
You'd have your visa revoked and be deported in a heartbeat, but you would not be charged or disappeared.
The fact is countries detain people all the time for a variety of reasons. I am not saying it's right, it just is.
In general it's a bad plan to put yourself in the hands of your opponents, especially if they are not very big on human rights and the rule of law.
Hostage diplomacy is very much a thing[1]. In general though I would think for most westerners it would be rather safe to visit the UAE, I think it's fairly aligned to the west and unlikely to detain people just to make a fuss.
[1] https://tnsr.org/2021/11/caught-between-giants-hostage-diplo...
There is a difference in scale and directness to this in UAE though.
I'm by no means apologizing for unethical and illegal extraordinary renditions, which were unacceptable, but that is a ridiculous claim.
Just an example:
>Thousands of people are convicted every year for “contempt of public officials”, a vaguely defined criminal offence that law enforcement and judicial authorities have applied in massive numbers to silence peaceful dissent.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/11/france-is-not...
> “The talk about this tweet is fake news,” a source close to the gynecologist and an MP of the Free Patriotic Movement, to which Kharrat is allegedly close, told L’Orient-Le Jour on condition of anonymity.
> He claimed that this tweet appeared after Kharrat’s arrest, saying that it was not published on the doctor’s personal account, but on that of an UAE national
It appears that the original tweet was faked.
(Yes, the excuse is that Europe has a different definition of free speech but the UAE would probably say the same. And even then I don't see how the US would be uncivilized according to the european definition of free speech lol)
I agree though that the restrictions on supporting BDS in some parts of the US are completely absurd. And I always find it funny that conservatives turn a completely blind eye to those laws (especially since it's in Texas! Pretty ironic). Yet the same laws often also apply in europe, and they are usually a lot stricter so my original point stands.
>Hervieu pointed to a recent ruling by the Court of Cassation, France’s court of final appeal, which upheld the criminal convictions of 12 BDS activists who burst into a supermarket in 2009 wearing “Boycott Israel” shirts and handing out fliers that read, “Buying Israeli products means legitimising crimes in Gaza.”
>The legislation means that what BDS activists regarded as political statements denouncing Israel’s violations of international law could be – and indeed were – treated by French courts as an "incitement" to hatred.
https://www.france24.com/en/20160120-france-boycott-israel-b...
Do you mean that the U.S. treats Palestinian activists poorly for visa purposes?
The US' "free" speech mantra has become a running gag with the post-9/11 developments already. I is peaking right now with all the evangelically influenced madness that is happening there.
If you openly support those kinds of groups, you absolutely SHOULD be stopped and interviewed/interrogated at the border. The 'humor' part has to be evaluated (e.g. if someone is always cracking weird jokes vs someone who suddenly pulls a Trumpian rant-one liner and tries to pass if off as ha-ha when it's really just the quiet part out loud).
>In 2013, a French mother was sentenced for “glorifying a crime” after she allowed her son, named Jihad, to go to school wearing a shirt that said “I am a bomb.”