United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), also known as 'Lil Saudi Arabia, is a wealthy oil-rich monarchy in the eastern Arabian Peninsula, bordering Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. As a Western-aligned nation, the UAE likes to present itself as a tolerant and forward-thinking state through efforts such as normalizing relations with IsraelFive reasons why Israel's peace deals with the UAE and Bahrain matter. BBC News. and holding the first "World Tolerance Summit."Hypocrisy of Dubai’s World Tolerance Summit. Human Rights Watch. However, the UAE has a dreadful human rights situation and remains at its heart a cold-blooded and repressive police state that regularly conducts torture, arbitrary arrests, and a zero-tolerance policy for any political dissent.The Constant Violation of Human Rights in the UAE. Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain. 
Despite the UAE's oppression, Westerners remain dazzled by its riches and architecture, and its most famous city Dubai is among the top 10 most visited cities on earth.Dubai is sixth most visited city on earth: Euromonitor. Gulf News. Retrieved February 27, 2018.Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems to think of the UAE as a role model for Muslim countries in the region, which is just appalling.
The UAE was born out of an 1820 treaty between the British Empire and Gulf pirates. The effect of the treaty was to immediately turn the pirate leaders into royal families, and for the area to be known as the named after the truce. The British Empire provided some level of military security with the States known as a protectorate not a colony, and the States were never formally part of the empire.Crack-up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy by Quinn Slobodian (2023) Metropolitan Books. ISBN 1250753899. In 1971, the protectorate status ended, and the UAE was born.
==Human rights==
"The Notorious U.A.E." is known for having no concept whatsoever of human rights and humanism. 
===Migrant labor and trafficking===
It actively practices modern-day slavery and partakes in human trafficking by importing helpless workers from South and Southeast Asia, as well as its poor Arab neighbors. Out of a population of around 9 million, 58% comes from South Asia and around 16% comes from other Asian countries, with only 16% of native Emiratis living off cheap migrant labor."Labor Migration in the United Arab Emirates: Challenges and Responses". Migration Policy Institute. 18 September 2013. Migrants have no collective action rights to demand better working conditions. If workers dare to protest, they'll be immediately deported and replaced with other trafficked migrants. The UAE is also rife with child slavery, with young boys from impoverished Arabian states being forced to work as camel jockeys.Child slavery provides camel jockeys in United Arab Emirates. Digital Journey. Retrieved February 27, 2018. The UAE's media is strictly censored, and any form of human rights activism will ensure that one will be incarcerated. Activist was deported for the traitorous crime of tweeting.UAE's crackdown on democracy short-sighted. Middleeastmonitor.com.
===Freedom of expression===
The UAE has been cracking down on internal dissent since 2011, arbitrarily arresting or "disappearing" people who speak out against the regime.World Report 2016: UAE. Human Rights Watch. In March 2017, the UAE detained Ahmed Mansoor, an award-winning human rights defender, for allegedly publishing "false information that harms national unity" on his social media accounts.UAE: Free Prominent Rights Defender. Human Rights Watch. His actual crime was calling for the release of another human rights activist. Authorities held Mansoor in an unknown location for more than a year with no access to a lawyer before sentencing him to a decade in prison.
Another political prisoner, Nasser bin-Ghaith, is also in prison for a ten-year sentence and is in poor health thanks to the legal system denying him access to medical care.World Report 2020: UAE. Human Rights Watch. 
One of the most absurd cases was that of Ali Issa Ahmad, a British football fan who was arrested for unknowingly violating a law against 'showing sympathy to Qatar'.Qatar football shirt row Briton 'leaves UAE custody'. BBC News. Ahmad was then brutally tortured with a knife while in custody, and has since allowed British media to publish images of his scars.'I was sure I'd die': UK football fan detained in UAE feared for his life. The Guardian.
===Prisoner abuse and torture===
Like other repressive dictatorships, the UAE's authorities need little provocation to inflict torture or other abuse on political prisoners. During the Arab Spring, the UAE subjected many dozens of people to torture methods including pulling of fingernails, savage beatings, stress positions, rape, and death threats.UAE: Ruthless crackdown on dissent exposes 'ugly reality' beneath façade of glitz and glamour. Amnesty International. 
In 2017, their authorities were found to have horribly abused cancer-sufferer Alia Abdel Nour after shackling her to a bed and refusing to allow her medical care. She died in 2019. The UAE also likes to force its detainees to sign confessions while blindfolded and after prolonged periods of solitary confinement.UAE: Eight Lebanese Face Unfair Trial. Human Rights Watch.
The justice system also approves of torture. For instance, when Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith told a UAE court about how he was tortured for a year without trial, the judge scoffed at him and shut off his microphone.UAE: Strong Ally of the West with a Turbulent Torture Record. Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain. 
===Women and LGBT rights===
Wahhabism is prominent in the UAE, and the country has legislation based on strict interpretations of Sharia. It implements the penal code which enables corporal punishments such as flogging and stoning. Homosexuals and apostasy are punishable by the death penalty, and adultery (if found out) is considered a grave sin which is applicable for non-Muslims as well. Many Western migrants are convicted for being raped.
===Public relations===
The UAE, unlike its big boss Saudi Arabia or rival Qatar, is known for attracting the fanfare of neocons and neoliberals alike, because of in spite of the aforementioned human rights violations. Westerners are especially attracted to Dubai, and the city is among the top 10 most visited cities on earth.Dubai is sixth most visited city on earth: Euromonitor. Gulf News. Retrieved February 27, 2018. This is most likely due to their cunning PR strategy in full effect, and not supporting overseas Jihadism led to much less negative coverage among the Western media, which is obsessed with terrorism.
==Dubai==
Dubai, an emirate/city in the UAE, has lots of money and so has tried to bootstrap itself from medieval theocracy to respected first-world-quality world citizen. This has been less than convincing in many cases.Detained In Dubai: Cat Le-Huy
Dubai has the highest per-capita income in the world, if you don't count all the poor people shipped in to do the actual work, and is currently home to the tallest building in the world.The Burj Khalifa
Dubai was now the new "Iceland" in 2009,Dubai: the new Iceland? (Eirikur Bergmann, Guardian, 2009-11-27) which didn't work out so well for the old Iceland. When will states finally learn to stop acting like hedge funds (or in Dubai's case, more like private equity)? As of 2023, there are signs that top-down directed endless building, may be reaching a crisis, particularly with Dubai's highly-visible world's largest Ferris wheel () broken and seemingly unfixable.The mystery of the Ain Dubai, the world’s largest (broken) Ferris wheel by Brian Rohan (July 9, 2023 at 1:00 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post.
===Royal family===
Dubai's ruler since 2006 is Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE. He is something of a playboy, with a vast number of racehorses and a fondness for hanging out with Queen Elizabeth II of the UK at British racetracks, and is reportedly also an acclaimed poet.
His family's treatment of women leaves something to be desired. In 2000 he had his daughter Shamsa kidnapped in Cambridge, England; she was bundled into a helicopter and flown out of the country. She has not been seen in public since, and is reportedly kept in Dubai, regularly dosed with tranquilizers.Princess Latifa urges UK police to reopen sister's kidnap case, BBC News, 25 February 2021 His daughter Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum fled the country in 2018, first to Oman and then via yacht towards Goa, but she was captured by armed men off the coast of India and apparently returned to Dubai.Family of Emirati princess release pictures to rebut 'false' abduction allegations, The Guardian, 24 Dec 2018 One of Sheikh Mohammed's wives, Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein (sister of the King of Jordan), also fled from his loving embrace, hiding in London in 2019 claiming to be afraid for her life; the Sheikh responded with a poem and litigation, while reportedly seizing her racehorses.Princess Haya: Dubai ruler's wife in UK 'in fear of her life', BBC, 2 July 2019Dubai's ruler battles wife in UK court after she fled emirate, The Guardian, 1 July 2019 In 2021 a British court found that the Sheikh had hacked Haya's phone using NSO Pegasus spyware software on eleven occasions in 2020, uploading large amounts of data.Dubai ruler hacked ex-wife using NSO Pegasus spyware, high court judge finds, The Guardian, October 6, 2021
He has a number of palaces in the UK, where he does not operate entirely above the law: a 2011 employment tribunal revealed claims of racism towards black staff, bullying, and spying on guests.Sheikh's British palace staff worked in 'culture of fear', The Daily Telegraph, 25 Mar 2011
==Climate change denial==
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as well as CEO of the Masdar, which invests in renewable energy, United Nations Climate Change Conference became the president of COP28 (the United Nations Climate Change Conference) in 2023. There was much criticism of UAE naming a fossil fuels company CEO as president, but in his defense, it had been also argued that fossil fuel companies need to part of the solution to mediating climate change. As it turned out, Al Jaber waited until COP28 began to come out as a climate change denier, claiming that there was "no science" indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels was necessary to reduce global warming.Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels by Damian Carrington & Ben Stockton (3 Dec 2023 05.33 EST) The Guardian.
==Gallery==
File:Abu Dhabi Skyline from Marina.jpg|Skyline of Abu Dhabi.
File:Luqaimat.jpg|Arabic coffee with lugaimat; a traditional Emirati sweet.
File:Fountain in front of Burj Khalifa.jpg|UAE citizens admire the Burj Khalifa.
File:Dunebashing group Dubai.jpg|Desert landscape outside Dubai.
File:Abu Dhabi - Bahia mosque - مسجد باهيا - panoramio.jpg|Bahia Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
File:Ain Dubai, night time light show of the ferris wheel located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.jpg|Ain Dubai (right), as of 2023, the world's most expensive light show
==See also==
*Libertarian paradise#Dubai's Palm Islands
==External links==
*Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - archives of articles related to modern-day slavery in UAE.
==References==
Category:Apartheid
Category:Authoritarian regimes
Category:Global warming denialists
Category:Middle Eastern countries
Category:Theocracy