2023-10-19 11:01:00
Human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor © Martin Ennals Foundation
On October 22, Emirati human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor will spend his birthday in prison for the seventh consecutive year. Regarding his continued arbitrary detention, Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said:
“As the international community prepares to gather in Dubai in November for the 28th annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), Ahmed Mansoor remains unjustly persecuted and behind bars more than seven years after his arrest. The international community must publicly condemn this mockery of justice and pressure the Emirati authorities to immediately release him..”
“The UAE has talked about making ‘voices heard’ at the COP28 climate conference, but continues to silence the voice of this iconic human rights activist since 2017 along with dozens of other dissidents before him.
“Following the imprisonment of Emirati human rights activists Mohamed al Roken and Mohamed al Mansoori, who were detained en masse and prosecuted in a grossly unfair trial in 2012-2013, Ahmed Mansoor was the only brave Emirati citizen who continued to work publicly to promote and protect human rights in their country.”
“When the Emirati government detained Ahmed Mansoor in March 2017, it did not even attempt to hide the fact that it considered his ‘crime’ to be directly related to the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression, accusing him of publishing ‘misleading information.’ ‘that’ hurts[ba] the reputation of the country’.”
“Since his arrest, authorities have kept Ahmed Mansoor in solitary confinement and denied him access to books, writing materials and basic hygiene items. This mistreatment is cruel and degrading and, due to the extremely prolonged isolation from human contact, may constitute psychological torture..”
“The continued arbitrary detention of Ahmed Mansoor and other peaceful dissidents by the UAE highlights the urgent need for the international community to exert its influence and pressure the Emirati authorities to immediately release all those arbitrarily detained and lift restrictions to the rights to freedom of expression and association before COP28.”
Additional information
Before arbitrarily detaining Ahmed Mansoor in 2017, the UAE had rounded up dozens of people in a grossly unfair mass trial of 94 defendants that concluded in 2013. Of them, 60 are in prison.
At the time of writing, at least 11 of these prisoners are being held incommunicado, and have been denied all visits and calls from family members since July. Local human rights sources and relatives of prisoners indicate that the number could be much higher.
The UAE will host the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as “COP28”, which will begin on November 30, 2023. However, given the restrictions on civil society space and repression of the rights to freedom of expression and association, the conference will lack credible Emirati voices defending human rights in the country.
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