United Nations Special Rapporteurs ‘Profoundly Concerned’ by Draconian UAE Anti-Terror Laws

United Nations Special Rapporteurs ‘Profoundly Concerned’ by Draconian UAE Anti-Terror Laws

Five United Nations Special Rapporteurs have published a joint report outlining their concerns about ‘anti-terrorism’ laws in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which, over the past years, have led to the prosecution and unjust imprisonment of scores of journalists, peaceful dissidents and human rights defenders throughout the country.

The report, published on the 13th November, stated that legislation ‘will have serious effects on the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental liberties’ in the UAE, and implored the Emirati government to amend the legislation to meet international standards of human rights. 

The focus of the report is the 2014 Law: ‘No. 7 On Combatting Terrorism Offences (Law 7), a sweeping piece of legislation that, while ostensibly aimed at counter-terrorism has the capacity to criminalise almost all, even peaceful, dissent in the UAE. Article 15 of the law, for example, defines that ‘temporary imprisonment shall be imposed on whoever declares, by any means of communication, his opposition to the State’. Such articles break the UAE’s commitment to uphold both the terms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Arab Charter on Human Rights, particularly both treaties’ provisions toward the protection of freedom of thought and expression. 

The report also highlights the vague nature of much of the law. Article 40 stipulates that “a person shall be deemed as posing a terrorist threat if said person adopts extremist or terrorist ideology to the extent that he/she seems likely to commit a terrorist offense’, the lack of a clear definition of when someone becomes ‘likely’ to commit a terrorist offense is determined by the report to lay the foundation for a ‘pre-emptive arbitrary deprivation of liberty’ and a risk of arbitrary detention.

Alongside this, the report calls attention to Munasaha Centres: ‘rehabilitation’ facilities for suspected terrorists. The report concludes that these facilities amount to ‘detention centres’ and are used to indefinitely detain prisoners. Due to the vague conditions one has to meet to be released from such a centre they constitute a breach of international standards on what constitutes fair detention. This is in addition to concerns that Munasaha Centres amount to ‘indoctrination programmes’, something which again would breach various human rights treaties to which the UAE is a signatory.

The report continues, highlighting further issues such as: the arbitrary revocation of citizenships from prisoners and their families, regardless of whether family members have actually committed a crime; the potential for sanctions to be used against individuals during a trial stage, before their formal prosecution, compromising a truly fair trial; and broad definitions of what defines a ‘terrorist’ gathering, and the sweeping powers given to public officials to break up such gatherings. 

The report concludes that the UAE’s counter-terrorism law creates the ‘legislative framework where certain forms of criticism or dissent can be interpreted and prosecuted as domestic terrorism, seemingly at the subjective discretion of the relevant authorities’, advising amendments be made to the Law to meet the international standards of human rights.

Tags: UAE, UN

 

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