United Arab Emirates: stop the charade and release activists convicted at the mass UAE 94 trial

Mar 3, 2015 | Advocacy

Thirteen human rights organizations, including the ICJ, call on the United Arabe Emirates government to release the activists jailed following the UAE 94 trial.

On the second anniversary of the start of the mass “UAE 94” trial that imprisoned dozens of government critics and reform activists in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), including prominent human rights defenders, judges, academics, and student leaders, a coalition of 13 organizations calls on the UAE government to release immediately and unconditionally all those imprisoned solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association following this grossly unfair trial, as well as those who remain detained or imprisoned for publicizing concerns about it.

The organizations also call on the authorities to ensure that the allegations of torture and other ill-treatment that the individuals were subjected to prior to and following their trial are promptly, independently, impartially and thoroughly investigated, that those responsible are held to account, and that the victims have access to effective remedies and to reparation.

The organizations share the serious concerns raised since 2011 by several UN human rights bodies and human rights organizations regarding the UAE government’s continuing pattern of harassment, secret, arbitrary and prolonged incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, and unfair trials targeting activists and those critical of the authorities, as well as its increasing use of national security as a pretext to clamp down on peaceful activism and to stifle calls for reform.

The space for dissent in the UAE is increasingly shrinking. The repression has been entrenched with the enactment in 2012 of the cybercrimes law, which the government has used to silence social media activists and others who support and defend freedom of expression online, and the enactment of the 2014 counter-terror law.

The vague and overly broad definition of terrorism in the 2014 law, which treats a wide range of activities, including those protected by human rights standards, as amounting to terrorism, may be used to sentence human rights defenders or critics of the government to lengthy prison terms or even death.

The organizations call on the UAE government, which currently is a member of the UN Human Rights Council, to adhere to its obligations to uphold human rights at home, including respecting the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, and to freedom of association and peaceful assembly.

The full statement can be found here in English and Arabic:

United Arab Emirates-Release activists convicted at the UAE94 trial-Advocacy-2015-ENG (full text in PDF)

United Arab Emirates -Release activists convicted at the UAE94 trial-Advocacy-2015-ARA (full text in PDF)

Read also:

UAE: Fear that Anti-Terrorism Law will be used to curtail human rights and target human rights defenders, Gulf Centre for Human Rights, Front Line Defenders, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, 13 December 2014,

Mass convictions following an unfair trial: The UAE 94 case, an ICJ report, October 2013,

United Arab Emirates: ICJ condemns blatant disregard of the right to a fair and public trial, ICJ, 12 March 2013