A major new global ranking index tracking the state of free expression published today (Wednesday, 25 January) by Index on Censorship sees the UK ranked as only “partially open” in every key area measured.
In the overall rankings, the UK fell below countries including Australia, Israel, Costa Rica, Chile, Jamaica and Japan. European neighbours such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Denmark also all rank higher than the UK.
The IndexIndex, developed by Index on Censorship and experts in machine learning and journalism at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), uses innovative machine learning techniques to map the free expression landscape across the globe, giving a country-by-country view of the state of free expression across academic, digital and media/press freedoms.
Key findings include:
The countries with the highest ranking (“open”) on the overall Index are clustered around western Europe and Australasia – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.
The UK and USA join countries such as Botswana, Czechia, Greece, Moldova, Panama, Romania, South Africa and Tunisia ranked as “partially open”.
The poorest performing countries across all metrics, ranked as “closed”, are Bahrain, Belarus, Burma/Myanmar, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Laos, Nicaragua, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates performed poorly in the IndexIndex but are embedded in key international mechanisms including G20 and the UN Security Council.
Ruth Anderson, Index on Censorship CEO, said:
“The launch of the new IndexIndex is a landmark moment in how we track freedom of expression in key areas across the world. Index on Censorship and the team at Liverpool John Moores University have developed a rankings system that provides a unique insight into the freedom of expression landscape in every country for which data is available.
“The findings of the pilot project are illuminating, surprising and concerning in equal measure. The United Kingdom ranking may well raise some eyebrows, though is not entirely unexpected. Index on Censorship’s recent work on issues as diverse as Chinese Communist Party influence in the art world through to the chilling effect of the UK Government’s Online Safety Bill all point to backward steps for a country that has long viewed itself as a bastion of freedom of expression.
“On a global scale, the IndexIndex shines a light once again on those countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates with considerable influence on international bodies and mechanisms – but with barely any protections for freedom of expression across the digital, academic and media spheres.”
Nik Williams, Index on Censorship policy and campaigns officer, said:
“With global threats to free expression growing, developing an accurate country-by-country view of threats to academic, digital and media freedom is the first necessary step towards identifying what needs to change. With gaps in current data sets, it is hoped that future ‘IndexIndex’ rankings will have further country-level data that can be verified and shared with partners and policy-makers.
“As the ‘IndexIndex’ grows and develops beyond this pilot year, it will not only map threats to free expression but also where we need to focus our efforts to ensure that academics, artists, writers, journalists, campaigners and civil society do not suffer in silence.”
Steve Harrison, LJMU senior lecturer in journalism, said:
“Journalists need credible and authoritative sources of information to counter the glut of dis-information and downright untruths which we’re being bombarded with these days. The IndexIndex is one such source, and LJMU is proud to have played our part in developing it.
“We hope it becomes a useful tool for journalists investigating censorship, as well as a learning resource for students. Journalism has been defined as providing information someone, somewhere wants suppressed – the IndexIndex goes some way to living up to that definition.”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”96621″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Governments have arsenals of weapons to censor information. The worst are well-known: detention, torture, extra-judicial (and sometimes court-sanctioned) killing, surveillance. Though governments also have access to less forceful but still insidious tools, such as website blocking and internet filtering, these aim to cut off the flow of information and advocacy at the source.
Another form of censorship gets limited attention, a kind of quiet repression: the travel ban. It’s the Trump travel ban in reverse, where governments exit rather than entry. They do so not merely to punish the banned but to deny the spread of information about the state of repression and corruption in their home countries.
In recent days I have heard from people around the world subject to such bans. Khadija Ismayilova, a journalist in Azerbaijan who has exposed high-level corruption, has suffered for years under fraudulent legal cases brought against her, including time in prison. The government now forbids her to travel. As she put it last year: “Corrupt officials of Azerbaijan, predators of the press and human rights are still allowed in high-level forums in democracies and able to speak about values, which they destroy in their own – our own country.”
Zunar, a well-known cartoonist who has long pilloried the leaders of Malaysia, has been subject to a travel ban since mid-2016, while also facing sedition charges for the content of his sharply dissenting art. While awaiting his preposterous trial, which could leave him with years in prison, he has missed exhibitions, public forums, high-profile talks. As he told me, the ban directly undermines his ability to network, share ideas, and build financial support.
Ismayilova and Zunar are not alone. Indiahas imposed a travel ban against the coordinator of a civil society coalition in Kashmir because of “anti-India activities” which, the government alleges, are meant to cause youth to resort to violent protest. Turkeyhas aggressively confiscated passports to target journalists, academics, civil servants, and school teachers. Chinahas barred a women’s human rights defender from travelling outside even her town in Tibet.
Bahrainconfiscated the passport of one activist who, upon her return from a Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, was accused by officials of “false statements” about Bahrain. The United Arab Emirates has held Ahmed Mansoor, a leading human rights defender and blogger and familiar to those in the UN human rights system, incommunicado for nearly this entire year. The government banned him from travelling for years based on his advocacy for democratic reform.
Few governments, apart from Turkey perhaps, can compete with Egypt on this front. I asked Gamal Eid, subject to a travel ban by Egyptian authorities since February of 2016, how it affects his life and work? Eid, one of the leading human rights defenders in the Middle East and the founder of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), has seen his organisation’s website shut down, public libraries he founded (with human rights award money!) forcibly closed, and his bank accounts frozen.
While Eid is recognised internationally for his commitment to human rights, the government accuses him of raising philanthropic funds for ANHRI “to implement a foreign agenda aimed at inciting public opinion against State institutions and promoting allegations in international forums that freedoms are restricted by the country’s legislative system.” He has been separated from his wife and daughter, who fled Egypt in the face of government threats. The ban forced him to close legal offices in Morocco and Tunisia, where he provided defence to journalists, and he lost his green card to work in the United States. He recognises that his situation does not involve the kind of torture or detention that characterises Egypt’s approach to opposition, but the ban has ruined his ability to make a living and to support human rights not just in Egypt but across the Arab world.
Eid is not alone in his country. He estimates that Egypt has placed approximately 500 of its nationals under a travel ban, about sixteen of whom are human rights activists. One of them is the prominent researcher and activist, Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who faces accusations similar to Eid’s.
Travel bans signal weakness, limited confidence in the power of a government’s arguments, perhaps even a public but quiet concession that, “yes indeed, we repress truth in our country”. While not nearly as painful as the physical weapons of censorship, they undermine global knowledge and debate. They exclude activists and journalists from the kind of training that makes their work more rigorous, accurate, and effective. They also interfere in a direct way with every person’s human right to “leave any country, including one’s own,” unless necessary for reasons such as national security or public order.
All governments that care about human rights should not allow the travel ban to continue to be the silent weapon of censorship – and not just for the sake of Khadija, Zunar, and Gamal, but for those who benefit from their critical voices and work. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Mapping Media Freedom” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-times-circle” color=”black” background_style=”rounded” size=”xl” align=”right”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Since 24 May 2014, Mapping Media Freedom’s team of correspondents and partners have recorded and verified 3,597 violations against journalists and media outlets.
Index campaigns to protect journalists and media freedom. You can help us by submitting reports to Mapping Media Freedom.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator color=”black”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Don’t lose your voice. Stay informed.” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_separator color=”black”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech. We believe that everyone should be free to express themselves without fear of harm or persecution – no matter what their views.
Join our mailing list (or follow us on Twitter or Facebook) and we’ll send you our weekly newsletter about our activities defending free speech. We won’t share your personal information with anyone outside Index.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″]
It was a Wednesday morning in early November when investigative journalist Slobodan Georgijev opened Informer, one of Serbia’s notorious tabloids. He had just arrived at his office, the newsroom of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), one of Serbia’s few independent media outlets. When he turned the page he was shocked by what he saw; a picture of his own face amongst two others, in an article calling three media outlets known for critical reporting of the Serbian government, including BIRN, “foreign spies”.
“It was funny and unpleasant at the same time,” Georgijev recalled, speaking to Index on Censorship. “Funny because I knew that this is just a campaign by Informer to undermine the credibility of independent journalists.” More importantly, he had begun worry about his own safety. “It’s also unpleasant because you never know how people will interpret such defamations.”
The first major incident followed the publication of a story about the cancellation of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s vacation in August 2015. Informer published an article saying that Vucic was forced to cancel his two day vacation in Serbia due to reporters from BIRN and CINS allegedly booking a room next to his.
The same newspaper also wrote that BIRN and CINS were meeting with European Union representatives on a weekly basis to plan to bring down the government.
“We are basically accused of being financed by the EU to work against our government,” Branko Cecen, director of CINS, told Index on Censorship. Cecen, like Georgiev, was also pictured and called a foreign spy in Informer. “Expressions like ‘foreign mercenaries’ and ‘joint criminal activity against their own state’ have been used.”
Informer newspaper is openly affiliated with the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of prime minister Aleksandar Vucic and has frequently been accused of political bias in favour of the party and the prime minister.
CINS, KRIK and BIRN have long reported on what they see as a slew of regular negative articles about themselves in tabloid newspapers with close ties to the government. There is no doubt that the three news outlets are targets because of their critical reporting on the government.
One of BIRN’s stories revealed a contract the Serbian government had signed with the national carrier of United Arab Emirates, Etihad Airways, to take over it’s state-owned counterpart Air Serbia. The deal had been financially damaging for Serbia, which was kept from the public until BIRN obtained and published the contract.
Another story investigated alleged corruption concerning a project for pumping out a flooded coal mine. BIRN found out that Serbia’s state-owned power company had awarded a contract to dewater the mine to a company who’s director is a close friend of the prime minister.
He also attacked the EU delegation in Serbia for being involved in discrediting the government by financing BIRN. “They got the money from Davenport and the EU to speak against the Serbian government,” the prime minister said, naming Michael Davenport, the head of the EU delegation in Belgrade.
BIRN’s editor-in-chief Gordana Igric told Index on Censorship she sees a resemblance to Serbia’s difficult nineties. “This reminds me of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, a time when the prime minister also had a prominent role and critical journalists and NGOs were marked as foreign mercenaries,” she said. “What’s happening in Serbia today makes you feel sad and confused.”
Independent journalists find the path that the prime minister is taking alarming. Some compare him with the Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or the Russia’s Vladimir Putin. According to Cecen, the level of freedom of expression is at the lowest level since the time of strongman Milosevic. “There is an aggressive campaign against anybody and anything criticising the prime minister and his policies”, he said. “The prime minister has taken over most media in Serbia, especially national TV networks, but also local ones. His small army of social media commentators is terrorising the internet. It is quite bleak and frustrating.”
Regardless of Vucic’s verbal attacks towards the EU delegation, Serbia has opened the first two chapters in its EU membership negotiation in December 2015. This represents a big step towards eventual membership of the European Union. But the latest progress report on Serbia (November 2015) says the country needs to do much more in terms of fighting corruption, the independence of the judiciary and ensuring media freedom.
“The concern over freedom of expression is always expressed in these reports,” Cecen said. “But we see no influence of such reports since situation with media and freedom of expression is deteriorating daily.” Cecen is disappointed in the European Union’s support for independent media in Serbia and finds that EU officials show too much support for the Serbian government and the prime minister.
After he had seen his own face in the paper, Georgiev picked up the phone and called up Informer’s editor-in-chief Dragan Vučićević to ask for a better picture in the next paper. Georgiev jokes about it and clearly doesn’t let accusations and threats hold him back. “People around me are making jokes”, he said. “They call me a foreign mercenary, an enemy of the state.”
Georgiev pressed charges for defamation against Informer. “We are living in a state of constant emergency,” he continued, concerned about the state of press freedom in his country. “Serbia is not like Turkey. But it goes very fast in that direction.”
Mapping Media Freedom
Click on the bubbles to view reports or double-click to zoom in on specific regions. The full site can be accessed at https://mappingmediafreedom.org/
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.[1]
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 anniversary of the mass trial, widely known as the “UAE 94” trial, coincides with the anniversary of the March 2011 petition from a group of 133 high-profile women and men addressed to the UAE President, which called for democratic reform. The petition elicited an uncompromisingly repressive response from the UAE authorities and many of its signatories, and their families, have been harassed, arbitrarily arrested, or imprisoned in the four years since they put their names to their call for reform.
The UAE 94 trial, which began on 4 March 2013 before the State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi, saw a total of 94 defendants, including eight who were charged and tried in absentia, stand trial en masse on the charge of establishing an organization that aimed to overthrow the government, a charge which they all denied. The trial failed to meet international fair trial standards and was widely condemned by human rights organizations and UN bodies, including the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The court accepted prosecution evidence that consisted largely of “confessions” made by defendants while they were in pre-trial detention. The court failed to require, before the admission of such evidence, that the prosecution prove beyond reasonable doubt that the “confessions” were obtained by lawful means and voluntarily from the accused. The court also failed to take steps to investigate, or order a prompt, independent, impartial and thorough investigation of the defendants’ claims that State Security interrogators had forced them, under torture or other ill-treatment, to make false “confessions” incriminating themselves and others during months when they were held incommunicado in secret locations and without access to lawyers or the outside world. The defendants were also denied a right of appeal to a higher tribunal; under UAE law, Federal Supreme Court judgments are final and not subject to appeal.[2]
On 2 July 2013, the court convicted 69 of the 94 defendants, including the eight tried in absentia, and acquitted 25. The defendants included many people who had achieved prominence in the UAE in their respective fields in the law, education and academia, business, and as government advisers. The court sentenced to prison terms of between seven and 15 years many well-known figures including: prominent human rights lawyer and law professor Dr Mohammed Al-Roken, who has written a number of books and journal articles on human rights, freedom of expression, and counterterror laws; high profile lawyers Dr Mohammed Al-Mansoori and Salem Al-Shehhi; judge Mohammed Saeed Al-Abdouli; law professor and former judge Dr Ahmed Al-Zaabi; lawyer and university professor Dr Hadef Al-Owais; senior member of the Ras Al-Khaimah ruling family Sheikh Dr Sultan Kayed Mohammed Al-Qassimi; businessman Khalid Al-Shaiba Al-Nuaimi; Science teacher Hussain Ali Al-Najjar Al-Hammadi; blogger and former teacher Saleh Mohammed Al-Dhufairi; student leader Abdulla Al-Hajri; and student and blogger Khalifa Al-Nuaimi who, before his arrest, had kept an active blog which he used to express criticism of the human rights situation in the UAE and the heavy-handed approach of the State Security apparatus.[3]
Others convicted at the trial include seven activists, known as the “UAE 7”, who had their citizenship arbitrarily withdrawn in 2011 and were told to leave the country. They are economist Ahmed Ghaith Al-Suwaidi; teacher Hussein Al-Jabri; former long-term employee of the Ministry of Presidential Affairs Hassan Al-Jabri; teacher Ibrahim Hassan Al-Marzouqi; former teacher Sheikh Mohammed Al-Sadeeq; Dr Shahin Abdullah Al-Hosni; and Dr Ali Hussain Al-Hammadi.
During the trial, the authorities took steps to prevent independent reporting of the proceedings. International media and independent trial observers were not permitted access to the court. Security authorities refused to allow an independent trial observer delegated by Amnesty International entry to the UAE immediately prior to the opening of the trial. Two independent observers sent by the International Commission of Jurists were turned away by plain-clothed security officials before they reached the Federal Supreme Court building.[4] Another international observer mandated by the International Federation for Human Rights, the Gulf Center for Human Rights, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, was also denied access to the final trial hearing on 2 July 2013, despite an earlier indication by the UAE authorities that she would be allowed to attend.[5]
In November 2013, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an Opinion on the UAE 94 case, concluding that the UAE government had deprived the defendants of their right to a fair trial, enshrined in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that the arrest and detention of the individuals had resulted from the exercise of their rights to freedom of opinion and expression and to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, guaranteed under articles 19 and 20 of the UDHR, stating that the restrictions on those rights could not be considered to be proportionate and justified. It declared the arrest and detention of the 61 defendants who were imprisoned following the mass trial to be arbitrary and called on the UAE authorities to release them and afford them appropriate reparation.[6]
Authorities also barred some of the defendants’ relatives from the courtroom; and others, who were permitted to attend, were harassed, detained or imprisoned after they criticized the proceedings and publicized torture allegations made by the defendants on the Twitter social media website.
In April 2013, a court sentenced Abdullah Al-Hadidi, the son of one of the UAE 94 who was convicted, Abdulrahman Al-Hadidi, to 10 months’ imprisonment on the charge of publishing details of the trial proceedings “without probity and in bad faith,” after he criticized the proceedings on Twitter. He was released in November 2013.
Blogger and netizen, Obaid Yousef Al-Zaabi, brother of Dr Ahmed Al-Zaabi, was arrested in July 2013 and again in December 2013, and was prosecuted on several charges based on his Twitter posts about the trial, including spreading “slander concerning the rulers of the UAE using phrases that lower their status, and accusing them of oppression” and “disseminating ideas and news meant to mock and damage the reputation of a governmental institution.” In June 2014, Obaid Yousef Al-Zaabi was acquitted of all charges but, despite this, the authorities continue to arbitrarily detain him, even though there is no legal basis for depriving him of his liberty. He remains in the prisoners’ ward of Sheikh Khalifa Medical City Hospital in Abu Dhabi, as he continues to suffer from advanced arthritis and rheumatism and has difficulty walking.[7]
Osama Al-Najjar, netizen and son of Hussain Ali Al-Najjar Al-Hammadi, was arrested in March 2014 and prosecuted for charges based on messages he posted on Twitter defending his father, who is one of the UAE 94. In November 2014, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and a heavy fine for charges including “designing and running a website on social networks with the aim of publishing inaccurate, satirical and defaming ideas and information that are harmful to the structure of State institutions”; “offending the State”; “instigating hatred against the State”; and “contacting foreign organizations and presenting inaccurate information” about the UAE 94 trial and living conditions inside Al-Razeen Prison. He had no right to appeal the verdict and is imprisoned in Al-Wathba Prison, Abu Dhabi.[8]
The UAE 94 trial proved to be the centerpiece of the authorities’ broader crackdown targeting expression of dissent and advocacy of greater public participation in the governance of the UAE and other reform. At one stroke, the authorities removed from the public arena their most prominent critics and the country’s leading advocates of reform, while signaling to other potential dissenters that they will not tolerate open political debate in the UAE or any form of criticism of the government.[9]
The coalition is very concerned about the lack of space for rights organizations to do their legitimate work and about the repeated attempts by the UAE authorities or their supporters to eliminate freedom of expression for its residents, not only in the traditional media, but also on social media networks. On 28 October 2014, for example, high profile human rights defender and blogger Ahmed Mansoor’s Twitter account, in which he publishes his personal thoughts and views, was hacked. On 15 February 2015, three sisters, Asma Khalifa Al-Suwaidi, Maryam Khalifa Al-Suwaidi and Alyaziyah Khalifa Al-Suwaidi, were subject to enforced disappearance and there are serious concerns for their safety. The three sisters have campaigned peacefully online for the release of their brother, one of the UAE 94 prisoners, Dr Issa Al-Suwaidi, highlighting his unfair trial and the human rights violations to which he was subjected at the hands of UAE authorities. Dr Issa Al-Suwaidi is a respected academic and was the General Secretary of the Red Crescent in the UAE between 1996 and 1998.
On 16 February 2015, government-owned newspaper The National reported that the UAE government had adopted 36 recommendations made by the Human Rights Department of the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs after it carried out a study of international reports on the country’s human rights performance. The online newspaper said one of the recommendations was that an independent committee be established to review all allegations of torture, which the coalition endorses. However, the report disappeared from The National’s website the day after it was published, which is discouraging.[10]
The coalition urgently calls on the UAE authorities to implement recommendations by UN bodies and international human rights organizations to:
release immediately and unconditionally all those individuals detained or imprisoned solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association;
prohibit the practice of secret detention;
institute safeguards against torture and other ill-treatment, and ensure that all complaints or allegations of torture and other ill-treatment are promptly, independently and thoroughly investigated;
ensure that victims of torture and other ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, and other human rights violations have access to effective remedies;
ensure that all persons deprived of their liberty receive a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial court in accordance with international human rights standards, including by having the right to appeal the judgment before a higher court or tribunal;
publish the 36 recommendations made by the Human Rights Department of the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and implement the recommendation that an independent committee be established to review all allegations of torture;
amend any legislation which impermissibly restricts the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, with a view to bringing all of these laws into full conformity with the UAE’s obligations under international human rights law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and
ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocols, and the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
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Amnesty International
For more information please call Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa press officer Sara Hashah on +44 20 7413 5566 / +44 7778 472 126, or email: [email protected]
Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)
For more information, please email Rawda Ahmed, Deputy Executive Director and Head of Legal Aid Unit, on [email protected]
ARTICLE 19
For more information, please contact David Diaz-Jogeix, Director of Programmes, on [email protected]
Gulf Centre for Human Rights
For more information, please call Khalid Ibrahim on +961 70159552, or email: [email protected]www.gc4hr.org
Freedom House
For media inquiries, please email Robert Herman, Vice President for Regional Programs, on [email protected]
Front Line Defenders
For more information, please call Jim Loughran, Head of Media and Communications on +353 (0)1 212 3750, or email [email protected]
Index on Censorship
For more information, please contact Melody Patry, senior advocacy officer, on +44 207 260 2660 or [email protected]
International Commission of Jurists
For more information, please contact Said Benarbia, Middle East and North Africa Programme, on + 41 22 979 38 17 or [email protected]
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
For more information, please contact Arthur Manet, Director of media relations, on +33 1 43 55 90 19 or [email protected]
Lawyers for Lawyers
For more information, please call Ms Adrie van de Streek, Executive Director on +31 (0)6 26 274 390 or email [email protected]
Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada
For more information, please call Gail Davidson, Executive Director, on +1 (604) 736 1175, or email [email protected]
PEN International
For more information, please contact PEN’s Communications and Campaigns Manager Sahar Halaimzai on +44 (0) 20 7405 0338 or email [email protected]
Reporters Without Borders
For more information, please call Lucie Morillon, Programme Director on +33 1 44 83 84 71, or email [email protected]
[1] Gulf Centre for Human Rights, Front Line Defenders, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, UAE: Fear that Anti-Terrorism Law will be used to curtail human rights and target human rights defenders, 13 December 2014, http://www.gc4hr.org/news/view/850
[3] A few days before his own arrest in July 2012, Khalifa al-Nuaimi wrote on his blog about the wave of mass arrests by the UAE’s State Security apparatus, saying “You do not have the right to take a son from his father…a father from his son…a teacher from his students…a preacher from his audience…and imprison them unlawfully.”
[6] United Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Opinions adopted by the Working Group on Arbitrary detention at its 68th Session (13-22 November 2013), UN Doc A/HRC/WGAD/2013/60.
[7] Amnesty International understands that during the first few weeks after his arrest, a senior State Security Prosecution official told Obaid Yousef Al-Zaabi that he would not be released even if he went to trial and a court found him innocent.
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