Petition: FREE HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS DURING DUBAI EXPO
ICFUAE has launched a petition calling on the Emirati authorities to release human rights defenders and activists during the Dubai Expo.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is hosting the Dubai Expo, the first World Expo to be held in the Arab World. The event will explore the issues of sustainability, mobility and opportunity. The country claims that “when the world comes together, we create a better tomorrow”.
But “coming together to hear diverse voices” and “create a better world” isn’t possible when you lock up people for speaking their minds. In the UAE, every single human rights defender has been exiled or imprisoned in violation of their right to freedom of expression. Not one of them has been invited to the Dubai Expo.
The campaign calls for the release of Emirati human rights defenders Ahmed Mansoor, Nasser Bin-Gaith, and three members of the group of prisoners known as the UAE94: Mohammed Al-Roken, Mohammed Al-Mansoori and Mohammed Abdul Razzaq Al-Siddiq.
Pending their release, we call on the UAE to comply with international standards for prisoners, including by allowing regular family visits to the detainees, access to healthcare and regular consultations with their lawyers. We ask for them to be given basic amenities such as a bed, blankets in winter and air conditioning in summer, and for prisoners to be allowed outside their cells to have contact with other inmates in the canteen or the yard, conditions which are notoriously denied to jailed activists.
