A QUEENSLAND woman spent eight months in a United Arab Emirates jail for adultery after complaining to police about being drugged and raped by co-workers.
Alicia Gali, 29, yesterday detailed her harrowing ordeal after filing a Queensland lawsuit against the five-star international resort where the attack took place in 2008.
Warning other women against going to the UAE, Ms Gali said she endured eight months in a crowded prison room with up to 30 other women after she complained to authorities of being raped.
"These countries don't have the same laws as us. You can end up in serious trouble," she said.
Apart from her family, no one in Australia knew Ms Gali had been jailed for adultery and illegal drinking, because Australian embassy staff advised her and her family not to go to the media.
"It was just traumatising," she said.
"Everything that happened was the worst thing that somebody could go through."
"You're just totally alone in a foreign country, with no assistance from your employer or the embassy."
Ms Gali, a salon manager at the resort, said she had been in the staff bar, where she was told she could legally drink, when another employee put ice in her drink.
She said it was the last thing she remembered before waking the next day in her room with painful injuries.
"I didn't know what had happened. I was traumatised, I felt ill. I didn't even remember getting there or what had happened," Ms Gali said.
She said it was only when she took herself to hospital did she realise she had been sexually assaulted.
Later she learned she had been heard screaming and security guards had found men hiding in her room, where she was naked and unconscious.
When she was discharged from hospital she was asked to go to a police station to make a statement and then speak in front of a judge.
"I realised when I was put in a police car that I was being taken to jail."
Ms Gali said she was never warned by her UAE employers that she could be charged with adultery and face prison if she complained of being raped, without having four adult male Muslim witnesses.
"I didn't even know what the charges were until five months into my sentence," Ms Gali said.
After serving eight months of a 12-month sentence, Ms Gali was pardoned and released and flew home in March 2009.
Since then she has been treated for post traumatic stress disorder, suffered claustrophobia and flashbacks.
"I felt depressed, angry and confused," she said.
"I was the victim. I'd had something wrong done to me and I was being punished."
Law firm Maurice Blackburn on Thursday filed a damages claim in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, alleging Ms Gali's employer failed to warn her of the risk of being drugged, raped, charged with adultery and jailed if she complained.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/queensland-woman-tells-of-her-jail-hell-in-united-arab-emirates/story-e6frfq80-1226028892697#ixzz1Vzjfn8vH
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011
UAE Unlawful Arrest
The ongoing ordeal of a U.S. businessman who has been rotting in a Emirate’s jail for more than three years, deprived of his civil rights, should serve as a warning to Americans and Westerners alike doing business with Emirate’s, a constituent monarchy of United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Shahin, a U.S. citizen, is just one of many foreigners who make up 80-95% of Emirate’s's 2.3 million residents. Until his arrest, Shahin was CEO of Deyaar Realty, once Emirate’s's second largest real estate developer, which, like Emirate’s's entire real-estate sector, was hit hard by the global economic recession.
Shahin was arrested without warrant or indictment in March 2008. Sources familiar with the case reported that he was held incommunicado for over two weeks, while his house and office were ransacked and his documents confiscated. He was deprived of food, water, sleep and access to a toilet for days. The brutality inflicted on Shahin caused his poor health to worsen, requiring him to undergo two major surgeries. After thirteen months he was charged with bribery, fraud and embezzlement
Shahin was forced to sign documents he did not understand, because of threats that his wife will be jailed and his children will be sent to a shelter. When finally "released" on bail, Shahin was promptly rearrested on newly trumped-up charges and still languishes in jail. Meanwhile, the Emirate’s government and its autocratic ruling family have ignored entreaties by the State Department, the U.S. Ambassador and members of Congress to discuss Shahin's plight. A letter from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to UAE's Ambassador asking him to intervene to ensure Shahin's health and safety while in prison remains unanswered nearly two years since it was delivered.
Shahin's Kafkaesque detention is not unusual in Emirate’s, where a growing number of foreigners are being subjected to the country's arcane Islamic legal codes and stripped of Western consideration for civil and human rights. The U.S. Department of State 2009 Human Rights Report for U.A.E., states: "while the constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention... there were reports that the government held persons in official custody without charge or a preliminary judicial hearing...[and] There were also reports of prison guard brutality." Moreover, the report notes: "court decisions remained subject to review by the political leadership."
Other victimized foreigners are Canadians Karen and Daniel Andrews. The husband, Daniel, a senior executive at a multinational company, was lured to Emirate’s in 2005 by the promise of "paradise in the desert." They had a rude awaking when they lost everything. In a sobering account in The Independent, in April 2009, on "The Dark Side of Emirate’s," Karen noted, "The thing you have to understand about Emirate’s is -- nothing is what it seems. Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing -- a modern kind of place -- but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."
These accounts are far from revealing the full array of substantive and procedural violations of due process and of basic decency Emirate’s has perpetrated on Shahin, the Andrews, and many other foreigners. Lured by the glitzy façade, Westerners have not been contemplating the Emirate's lack of transparency and its growing abuse of foreigners.
The number of foreign businessmen detained in Emirate’s is unknown, as the local authorities do not release such information. But media reports from Europe, the U.S., and other countries that supply the bankers, businessmen, engineers and others who labor to further Emirate’s's riches, reveal that such arrests have spiked since the Emirate's economic bubble burst in 2008. Foreigners should be especially wary, as Emirate’s's banking and economy are still on the decline, contrary to repeated assurances from local officials.
Still, Emirate’s's Western trappings and its well-crafted façade of the golden city in the desert continue to lure foreigners. But like every Arabian Desert mirage, many wake up with a mouthful of sand, and their life in shambles.
Shahin, a U.S. citizen, is just one of many foreigners who make up 80-95% of Emirate’s's 2.3 million residents. Until his arrest, Shahin was CEO of Deyaar Realty, once Emirate’s's second largest real estate developer, which, like Emirate’s's entire real-estate sector, was hit hard by the global economic recession.
Shahin was arrested without warrant or indictment in March 2008. Sources familiar with the case reported that he was held incommunicado for over two weeks, while his house and office were ransacked and his documents confiscated. He was deprived of food, water, sleep and access to a toilet for days. The brutality inflicted on Shahin caused his poor health to worsen, requiring him to undergo two major surgeries. After thirteen months he was charged with bribery, fraud and embezzlement
Shahin was forced to sign documents he did not understand, because of threats that his wife will be jailed and his children will be sent to a shelter. When finally "released" on bail, Shahin was promptly rearrested on newly trumped-up charges and still languishes in jail. Meanwhile, the Emirate’s government and its autocratic ruling family have ignored entreaties by the State Department, the U.S. Ambassador and members of Congress to discuss Shahin's plight. A letter from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to UAE's Ambassador asking him to intervene to ensure Shahin's health and safety while in prison remains unanswered nearly two years since it was delivered.
Shahin's Kafkaesque detention is not unusual in Emirate’s, where a growing number of foreigners are being subjected to the country's arcane Islamic legal codes and stripped of Western consideration for civil and human rights. The U.S. Department of State 2009 Human Rights Report for U.A.E., states: "while the constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention... there were reports that the government held persons in official custody without charge or a preliminary judicial hearing...[and] There were also reports of prison guard brutality." Moreover, the report notes: "court decisions remained subject to review by the political leadership."
Other victimized foreigners are Canadians Karen and Daniel Andrews. The husband, Daniel, a senior executive at a multinational company, was lured to Emirate’s in 2005 by the promise of "paradise in the desert." They had a rude awaking when they lost everything. In a sobering account in The Independent, in April 2009, on "The Dark Side of Emirate’s," Karen noted, "The thing you have to understand about Emirate’s is -- nothing is what it seems. Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing -- a modern kind of place -- but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."
These accounts are far from revealing the full array of substantive and procedural violations of due process and of basic decency Emirate’s has perpetrated on Shahin, the Andrews, and many other foreigners. Lured by the glitzy façade, Westerners have not been contemplating the Emirate's lack of transparency and its growing abuse of foreigners.
The number of foreign businessmen detained in Emirate’s is unknown, as the local authorities do not release such information. But media reports from Europe, the U.S., and other countries that supply the bankers, businessmen, engineers and others who labor to further Emirate’s's riches, reveal that such arrests have spiked since the Emirate's economic bubble burst in 2008. Foreigners should be especially wary, as Emirate’s's banking and economy are still on the decline, contrary to repeated assurances from local officials.
Still, Emirate’s's Western trappings and its well-crafted façade of the golden city in the desert continue to lure foreigners. But like every Arabian Desert mirage, many wake up with a mouthful of sand, and their life in shambles.
Secrets…but secrets about how your being governed…menacing complexity….how very Kafkaesque
If U.S. Rep. Ron Paul accomplishes nothing else in his campaign for the presidency, he has kept a needed spotlight on how quick we are as a nation to trade away our liberties for small measures of additional security.
In Iowa last weekend, where Paul came in second in the Republican Party’s straw poll, he consistently pressed a message that thrilled the party’s libertarian wing but annoyed the rest of them. The Patriot Act, he said — a law passed in a panic just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that dramatically expands the government’s authority to spy on citizens — is dangerously unconstitutional.
“The Patriot Act is an attack on our liberties and the Fourth Amendment,” he said. “We cannot protect liberty by taking liberty away from the American people.”
Criticism of the Patriot Act at this point might seem a little late, given that Congress and President Barack Obama reauthorized the law in May for another four years. But any debate that thoughtfully addresses the inherent tension in a democracy between personal freedoms and national security is never too little or too late.
Secret interpretation
And while the Patriot Act will remain the law of the land until at least 2015, civil libertarians are pushing the Obama administration to reveal its secret written interpretation of this law and of a related surveillance law. Two U.S. senators with insider knowledge, as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warn that Americans would be appalled if they knew how broadly the Justice Department has interpreted what the law allows government snoops to do.
The Patriot Act arguably runs afoul of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights in any number of ways, a particularly good example being the so-called “library records provision.” Under this provision — Section 215 — the FBI can obtain a court order forcing libraries and businesses to produce “any tangible things” that might assist in a terrorism investigation. Examples offered in the law include “books, records, papers, documents, and other items.”
On the face of it, this might not seem objectionable. Of course government needs access to records in terrorism investigations, and grand juries and the police have long had access to such records in criminal investigations. Defenders of Section 215 point to how the grand jury investigating the 1996 bombing in Atlanta’s Olympic Park subpoenaed bookseller records to show that a suspect, Eric Rudolph, bought a book on bombs.
Too wide a net
But unlike in a criminal investigation, the Patriot Act allows the FBI access to private records — “any tangible things” — even if the person targeted has been connected to no illegal activity at all, let alone terrorism. The only requirement is that the materials being sought must be “connected to” or “relevant to” an ongoing investigation. The law allows the FBI to cast too wide a net.
“The government might ask for ‘all the phone records’ of everyone making a call to Saudi Arabia last month or last year, or all the records of computer searches on ‘jihad’ or all records of people flying to Frankfurt,” said James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology. “A judge might approve those requests as ‘relevant.’ ”
In this respect, Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing “probable cause” that the person has committed or will commit a crime.
Section 215 further violates the Fourth Amendment, the American Civil Liberties Union argues, by failing to require that the FBI inform a person — even after the fact — that his or her privacy has been compromised. That is to say, should the feds decide to snoop into the paper trail of your life, you need not be told and may never know.
But if the FBI is checking out, say, the emails you wrote on a computer at your local library, couldn’t the librarian tell you? No. Section 215 places a gag order on the librarian, a fairly obvious infringement on the librarian’s First Amendment’s right to free speech.
“It simply could be a relationship with someone caught up in an investigation,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.
Our inclination is to see the glass half empty and oppose this potentially dangerous infringement on the First Amendment. We have little confidence that it would not be — or, for that matter, has not been — abused by government agents. We remember too well the guilt-by-association communist witch hunts of the 1950s and the Chicago Police Red Squad surveillance of political organizations during the 1970s.
At the moment, perhaps the most pressing issue with respect to Section 215 is how broadly it is being interpreted by the Obama administration — we just don’t know. But Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, apparently have read the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of the law — possibly written during the Bush administration — and are deeply troubled by it. When Congress returns to Washington in the fall, they vow, they will push to have this document made public. They also will call for making public the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of government powers under the related Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act,” Wyden warned on the Senate floor in May, “they will be stunned and they will be angry.”
The American people deserve to know, without further delay, how the White House is interpreting these powerful laws that allow spying on law-abiding citizens.
A vigilant knowledgeable public is the best check against government infringements on our liberties.
In Iowa last weekend, where Paul came in second in the Republican Party’s straw poll, he consistently pressed a message that thrilled the party’s libertarian wing but annoyed the rest of them. The Patriot Act, he said — a law passed in a panic just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that dramatically expands the government’s authority to spy on citizens — is dangerously unconstitutional.
“The Patriot Act is an attack on our liberties and the Fourth Amendment,” he said. “We cannot protect liberty by taking liberty away from the American people.”
Criticism of the Patriot Act at this point might seem a little late, given that Congress and President Barack Obama reauthorized the law in May for another four years. But any debate that thoughtfully addresses the inherent tension in a democracy between personal freedoms and national security is never too little or too late.
Secret interpretation
And while the Patriot Act will remain the law of the land until at least 2015, civil libertarians are pushing the Obama administration to reveal its secret written interpretation of this law and of a related surveillance law. Two U.S. senators with insider knowledge, as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warn that Americans would be appalled if they knew how broadly the Justice Department has interpreted what the law allows government snoops to do.
The Patriot Act arguably runs afoul of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights in any number of ways, a particularly good example being the so-called “library records provision.” Under this provision — Section 215 — the FBI can obtain a court order forcing libraries and businesses to produce “any tangible things” that might assist in a terrorism investigation. Examples offered in the law include “books, records, papers, documents, and other items.”
On the face of it, this might not seem objectionable. Of course government needs access to records in terrorism investigations, and grand juries and the police have long had access to such records in criminal investigations. Defenders of Section 215 point to how the grand jury investigating the 1996 bombing in Atlanta’s Olympic Park subpoenaed bookseller records to show that a suspect, Eric Rudolph, bought a book on bombs.
Too wide a net
But unlike in a criminal investigation, the Patriot Act allows the FBI access to private records — “any tangible things” — even if the person targeted has been connected to no illegal activity at all, let alone terrorism. The only requirement is that the materials being sought must be “connected to” or “relevant to” an ongoing investigation. The law allows the FBI to cast too wide a net.
“The government might ask for ‘all the phone records’ of everyone making a call to Saudi Arabia last month or last year, or all the records of computer searches on ‘jihad’ or all records of people flying to Frankfurt,” said James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology. “A judge might approve those requests as ‘relevant.’ ”
In this respect, Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing “probable cause” that the person has committed or will commit a crime.
Section 215 further violates the Fourth Amendment, the American Civil Liberties Union argues, by failing to require that the FBI inform a person — even after the fact — that his or her privacy has been compromised. That is to say, should the feds decide to snoop into the paper trail of your life, you need not be told and may never know.
But if the FBI is checking out, say, the emails you wrote on a computer at your local library, couldn’t the librarian tell you? No. Section 215 places a gag order on the librarian, a fairly obvious infringement on the librarian’s First Amendment’s right to free speech.
“It simply could be a relationship with someone caught up in an investigation,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.
Our inclination is to see the glass half empty and oppose this potentially dangerous infringement on the First Amendment. We have little confidence that it would not be — or, for that matter, has not been — abused by government agents. We remember too well the guilt-by-association communist witch hunts of the 1950s and the Chicago Police Red Squad surveillance of political organizations during the 1970s.
At the moment, perhaps the most pressing issue with respect to Section 215 is how broadly it is being interpreted by the Obama administration — we just don’t know. But Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, apparently have read the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of the law — possibly written during the Bush administration — and are deeply troubled by it. When Congress returns to Washington in the fall, they vow, they will push to have this document made public. They also will call for making public the Justice Department’s secret interpretation of government powers under the related Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act,” Wyden warned on the Senate floor in May, “they will be stunned and they will be angry.”
The American people deserve to know, without further delay, how the White House is interpreting these powerful laws that allow spying on law-abiding citizens.
A vigilant knowledgeable public is the best check against government infringements on our liberties.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Torture brought to you by Siemens and Nokia in Bahrain!!!
The interrogation of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar followed a pattern.
First, Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses beat the 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist in a windowless room two stories below ground in the Persian Gulf kingdom’s National Security Apparatus building. Then, they dragged him upstairs for questioning by a uniformed officer armed with another kind of weapon: transcripts of his text messages and details from personal mobile phone conversations, he says.
If he refused to sufficiently explain his communications, he was sent back for more beatings, says Al Khanjar, who was detained from August 2010 to February.
“It was amazing,” he says of the messages they obtained. “How did they know about these?”
The answer: Computers loaded with Western-made surveillance software generated the transcripts wielded in the interrogations described by Al Khanjar and scores of other detainees whose similar treatment was tracked by rights activists, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.
The spy gear in Bahrain was sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN’s divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations. Both requested anonymity because they have signed nondisclosure agreements. The sale and maintenance contracts were also confirmed by Ben Roome, a Nokia Siemens spokesman based in Farnborough, England.
Companies are free to sell such equipment almost anywhere. For the most part, the U.S. and European countries lack export controls to deter the use of such systems for repression.
“The technology is becoming very sophisticated, and the only thing limiting it is how deeply governments want to snoop into lives,” says Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Surveillance is typically a state secret, and we only get bits and pieces that leak out.”
The images of the Arab spring crackdowns earlier this year unnerved Nikhil Gyamlani, who as a consultant for Trovicor and Nokia Siemens had developed monitoring systems and sold them to some of the countries. The authorities jammed or restricted communications to stymie gatherings and knew where to send riot police before a protest could even start, according to eyewitness reports.
At least 30 people have been killed so far in this year’s uprising in Bahrain, a U.S. ally situated between Qatar and Saudi Arabia that is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Security forces beat paramedics, doctors and nurses who treated the wounded, and prosecutors have charged dozens of medical workers with crimes such as “incitement against the regime,” according to Human Rights Watch. In June, the U.S. put Bahrain on its list of human rights violators.
The toolbox allows more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype. Some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people’s locations through their mobile phones. The monitoring systems can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies.
Uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain have drawn strength from technologies such as social-networking sites and mobile-phone videos. Yet, the flip side of the technology that played a part in this year’s “Facebook revolutions” may be far more forceful.
Rulers fought back, exploiting their citizens’ digital connections with increasingly intrusive tools.
They’ve tapped a market that’s worth more than $3 billion a year, according to Jerry Lucas, president of McLean, Virginia- based TeleStrategies Inc., organizer of the ISS World trade shows for intelligence and lawful interception businesses. He derives that estimate by applying per-employee revenue figures from publicly traded Verint’s lawful intercept business across the mostly privately held industry.
In the hands of autocrats, the surveillance gear is providing unprecedented power to monitor and crush dissent -- a phenomenon that Ben Wagner of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, calls “push-button autocracy.”
Besides Bahrain, several other Middle Eastern nations that cracked down on uprisings this year -- including Egypt, Syria and Yemen -- also purchased monitoring centers from the chain of businesses now known as Trovicor. Trovicor equipment plays a surveillance role in at least 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations, according to the two people familiar with the installations.
Trovicor’s precursor, which started in 1993 as the voice- and data-recording unit of Siemens, in 2007 became part of Nokia Siemens Networks, the world’s second biggest maker of wireless communications equipment. NSN, a 50-50 joint venture with Espoo, Finland-based Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), sold the unit, known as Intelligence Solutions, in March 2009. The new owners, Guernsey-based Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, renamed the business Trovicor, coined from the Latin and Esperanto words for find and heart, according to the company’s website.
Bahrain is confronting alleged human rights violations through the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, a panel established in June by royal decree to probe the recent violence, says government spokesman Abdul-Aziz bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, the international counselor at Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority. Since July 24, the commission has recorded 140 allegations of physical abuse and torture, according to an Aug. 10 statement on its website.
The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and other human rights activists have blamed Nokia Siemens for aiding government repression. In 2009, the company disclosed that it sold a monitoring center to Iran, prompting hearings in the European Parliament, proposals for tighter restrictions on U.S. trade with Iran, and an international “No to Nokia” boycott campaign.
In Bahrain, officials routinely use surveillance in the arrest and torture of political opponents, according to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He says he has evidence of this from former detainees, including Al Khanjar, and their lawyers and family members.
“Everyone was interrogated based on telephone calls that were checked -- and not only us, the activists,” he says. “Even our children, our wives, our sisters are being monitored.”
At Bahrain’s telecommunications regulator, Aldoseri says monitoring technology is used only by order of legal authorities such as judges and prosecutors. A former fighter pilot, Aldoseri, 33, led the drafting of Bahrain’s 2009 regulations for lawful interception.
Available online, the regulations make clear that every phone and Internet operator must provide the state with the ability to monitor communications. Phone companies also must track the location of phones within a 164-foot (50-meter) radius, the rules say.
For Bahraini security agents, monitoring centers are essential for gathering and printing text messages and other transmissions, Aldoseri says.
During the Arab spring, it was easy to spot the company’s fingerprints, says Gyamlani. Tuning in to Germany’s N24 news channel at his home in Munich, he immediately suspected that governments were abusing systems he’d installed.
Failed uprisings stood out to him because of the way the authorities quashed unrest before it spread, says Gyamlani, a native of India who moved to Germany 12 years ago to study and work.
Visitors to Trovicor’s headquarters on the third floor of a glass office building in Munich are greeted by a life-size statue of the company’s mascot -- a stalking panther -- by the reception desk. The mascot is a carryover from the Nokia Siemens unit, as were most of the company’s roughly 170 workers, current and former employees say.
Al Khanjar, the Bahraini activist beaten during interrogations about his text messages, is in hiding today. He says he’s reluctant to communicate by mobile phone and takes calls using Skype on a computer with software that disguises its location. The Internet connection is his only way of communicating with his wife and 9-year-old son.
“I’m hidden somewhere,” he says. “I’m unfortunately in Bahrain. They’re going to kill me. What to do? What to do?”
Al Khanjar took up the anti-torture cause after being detained and interrogated for six days in 2000. His jailers handcuffed him, hung him from a stick “like a goat” and beat the soles of his feet, he says.
He’s now spokesman for the government-banned Bahraini National Committee for Martyrs and Victims of Torture. He and other activists have documented the security service’s human rights violations for a decade, he says. His activism includes work with the United Nations Committee Against Torture and appearances on Qatar’s Al Jazeera channel.
Al Khanjar says that on Aug. 15, 2010, three days after he returned from speaking about human rights to a committee at the House of Lords in London, plainclothes police knocked on his door in Bahrain at about 2:30 a.m. It was the start of a six- month ordeal.
For his first 85 days or so in custody, Al Khanjar saw no one from the outside, he says. For one agonizing stretch, his jailers forced him to stand without sleeping for five days. At other times they beat him with hoses and their hands and threatened him with sexual abuse, he says.
“They had collected their information from tracking calls,” he says, including whom he spoke with and what they said. “They told me a lot of things about our activities in the human rights field and political activities I’d participated in.”
And they showed him several pages of transcripts of his text messages. An interrogator held the papers in front of Al Khanjar, pointing out the Arabic words printed in black ink on white paper and reading aloud details such as the dates and recipients of the texts, he says.
Al Khanjar says he sent one of the messages on June 9, 2009, after a flight to Qatar to visit a friend. His trip was thwarted when Qatar refused him entry at the Bahrain government’s request. He suspected that his appearances on the satellite news channel, based in Qatar, explained the Bahraini government’s interest in his travel there. Al Khanjar fired off the text to a fellow activist. “What happened to me is because of Al Jazeera,” it read.
More than a year later, when Al Khanjar was in jail, authorities seized on a transcript of that message, asking what he meant by it, particularly the reference to Al Jazeera, he says. Suspicious of his explanation, officers threatened to put him in a solitary confinement cell with no toilet two floors down -- the same floor where they tortured prisoners.
“You cannot hear anything,” Al Khanjar says. “You don’t know the time. You don’t know if it’s day or night. No windows.”
Only after overhearing officers refer in radio chatter among themselves to their national security building as Jazeera did he conclude their interest in his innocuous text message was a misunderstanding that he had been making a reference to their facilities.
“They thought that I knew something about their code,” he says.
A prosecutor charged Al Khanjar with crimes that included establishing a group in violation of the law and inciting and participating in unauthorized meetings of more than five people for the purpose of undermining national security, according to a copy of the indictment translated by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales.
An arm of the England and Wales lawyers association, the committee sent a delegation to Bahrain that observed an Oct. 28, 2010, hearing in the case against Al Khanjar and 22 others arrested at the same time.
The detainees testified about being tortured while in custody, according to the bar committee’s February 2011 report: beatings, particularly to the legs and ears; being kept in stress positions or naked for prolonged periods; hanging in a position called falaqa in which the detainee is suspended from a bar and the soles of his feet beaten; and, in some cases, sexual abuse.
The actions violated both international law and the laws of Bahrain, the report concluded. “Credible and pervasive allegations of mistreatment and torture, which are dismissed as fabrication by the Public Prosecutor, completely undermine the rule of law,” it stated.
A separate military tribunal later tried him and others -- many, like him, in absentia -- and convicted them on charges that included trying to overthrow the government. Al Khanjar, who denies the charges in this and the earlier case, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Company executives understood that they had the only monitoring-center computers in the country, based on conversations with Bahraini officials, one of those familiar with the situation says.
Schaake, 32, who represents the Netherlands in the European Parliament, says companies should be barred from exporting such equipment to countries with poor human rights records. U.S. and EU export laws and UN sanctions control just a narrow slice of technology such as weapons systems or data encryption. International embargoes that cover a broader range of equipment target only a small circle of the worst actors, such as Myanmar and North Korea.
“It is time for more pressure, for more transparency and accountability when it comes to these products and services,” Schaake says. As a first step, Schaake says surveillance systems involving information and communications technology should join military items such as missile parts on lists of restricted exports.
Schaake helped to sponsor a parliamentary resolution in February 2010 that called for the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, to ban exports of such technology to regimes that could abuse it. The commission hasn’t implemented the nonbinding resolution.
The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2010 barring federal contracts with any businesses that sold monitoring gear to Iran. An investigation ordered by Congress and completed in June by the Government Accountability Office was unable to identify any companies supplying the technology to Iran, partly because the business is so secretive, the agency reported.
“The United Nations should put pressure on those companies that supply equipment to these tyrant regimes,” he says.
Bahraini government regulator Aldoseri says the companies are all too happy to sell the equipment regardless of what happens once it’s installed.
First, Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses beat the 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist in a windowless room two stories below ground in the Persian Gulf kingdom’s National Security Apparatus building. Then, they dragged him upstairs for questioning by a uniformed officer armed with another kind of weapon: transcripts of his text messages and details from personal mobile phone conversations, he says.
If he refused to sufficiently explain his communications, he was sent back for more beatings, says Al Khanjar, who was detained from August 2010 to February.
“It was amazing,” he says of the messages they obtained. “How did they know about these?”
The answer: Computers loaded with Western-made surveillance software generated the transcripts wielded in the interrogations described by Al Khanjar and scores of other detainees whose similar treatment was tracked by rights activists, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.
The spy gear in Bahrain was sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN’s divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations. Both requested anonymity because they have signed nondisclosure agreements. The sale and maintenance contracts were also confirmed by Ben Roome, a Nokia Siemens spokesman based in Farnborough, England.
Companies are free to sell such equipment almost anywhere. For the most part, the U.S. and European countries lack export controls to deter the use of such systems for repression.
“The technology is becoming very sophisticated, and the only thing limiting it is how deeply governments want to snoop into lives,” says Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Surveillance is typically a state secret, and we only get bits and pieces that leak out.”
The images of the Arab spring crackdowns earlier this year unnerved Nikhil Gyamlani, who as a consultant for Trovicor and Nokia Siemens had developed monitoring systems and sold them to some of the countries. The authorities jammed or restricted communications to stymie gatherings and knew where to send riot police before a protest could even start, according to eyewitness reports.
At least 30 people have been killed so far in this year’s uprising in Bahrain, a U.S. ally situated between Qatar and Saudi Arabia that is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Security forces beat paramedics, doctors and nurses who treated the wounded, and prosecutors have charged dozens of medical workers with crimes such as “incitement against the regime,” according to Human Rights Watch. In June, the U.S. put Bahrain on its list of human rights violators.
The toolbox allows more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype. Some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people’s locations through their mobile phones. The monitoring systems can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies.
Uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain have drawn strength from technologies such as social-networking sites and mobile-phone videos. Yet, the flip side of the technology that played a part in this year’s “Facebook revolutions” may be far more forceful.
Rulers fought back, exploiting their citizens’ digital connections with increasingly intrusive tools.
They’ve tapped a market that’s worth more than $3 billion a year, according to Jerry Lucas, president of McLean, Virginia- based TeleStrategies Inc., organizer of the ISS World trade shows for intelligence and lawful interception businesses. He derives that estimate by applying per-employee revenue figures from publicly traded Verint’s lawful intercept business across the mostly privately held industry.
In the hands of autocrats, the surveillance gear is providing unprecedented power to monitor and crush dissent -- a phenomenon that Ben Wagner of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, calls “push-button autocracy.”
Besides Bahrain, several other Middle Eastern nations that cracked down on uprisings this year -- including Egypt, Syria and Yemen -- also purchased monitoring centers from the chain of businesses now known as Trovicor. Trovicor equipment plays a surveillance role in at least 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations, according to the two people familiar with the installations.
Trovicor’s precursor, which started in 1993 as the voice- and data-recording unit of Siemens, in 2007 became part of Nokia Siemens Networks, the world’s second biggest maker of wireless communications equipment. NSN, a 50-50 joint venture with Espoo, Finland-based Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), sold the unit, known as Intelligence Solutions, in March 2009. The new owners, Guernsey-based Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, renamed the business Trovicor, coined from the Latin and Esperanto words for find and heart, according to the company’s website.
Bahrain is confronting alleged human rights violations through the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, a panel established in June by royal decree to probe the recent violence, says government spokesman Abdul-Aziz bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, the international counselor at Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority. Since July 24, the commission has recorded 140 allegations of physical abuse and torture, according to an Aug. 10 statement on its website.
The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and other human rights activists have blamed Nokia Siemens for aiding government repression. In 2009, the company disclosed that it sold a monitoring center to Iran, prompting hearings in the European Parliament, proposals for tighter restrictions on U.S. trade with Iran, and an international “No to Nokia” boycott campaign.
In Bahrain, officials routinely use surveillance in the arrest and torture of political opponents, according to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He says he has evidence of this from former detainees, including Al Khanjar, and their lawyers and family members.
“Everyone was interrogated based on telephone calls that were checked -- and not only us, the activists,” he says. “Even our children, our wives, our sisters are being monitored.”
At Bahrain’s telecommunications regulator, Aldoseri says monitoring technology is used only by order of legal authorities such as judges and prosecutors. A former fighter pilot, Aldoseri, 33, led the drafting of Bahrain’s 2009 regulations for lawful interception.
Available online, the regulations make clear that every phone and Internet operator must provide the state with the ability to monitor communications. Phone companies also must track the location of phones within a 164-foot (50-meter) radius, the rules say.
For Bahraini security agents, monitoring centers are essential for gathering and printing text messages and other transmissions, Aldoseri says.
During the Arab spring, it was easy to spot the company’s fingerprints, says Gyamlani. Tuning in to Germany’s N24 news channel at his home in Munich, he immediately suspected that governments were abusing systems he’d installed.
Failed uprisings stood out to him because of the way the authorities quashed unrest before it spread, says Gyamlani, a native of India who moved to Germany 12 years ago to study and work.
Visitors to Trovicor’s headquarters on the third floor of a glass office building in Munich are greeted by a life-size statue of the company’s mascot -- a stalking panther -- by the reception desk. The mascot is a carryover from the Nokia Siemens unit, as were most of the company’s roughly 170 workers, current and former employees say.
Al Khanjar, the Bahraini activist beaten during interrogations about his text messages, is in hiding today. He says he’s reluctant to communicate by mobile phone and takes calls using Skype on a computer with software that disguises its location. The Internet connection is his only way of communicating with his wife and 9-year-old son.
“I’m hidden somewhere,” he says. “I’m unfortunately in Bahrain. They’re going to kill me. What to do? What to do?”
Al Khanjar took up the anti-torture cause after being detained and interrogated for six days in 2000. His jailers handcuffed him, hung him from a stick “like a goat” and beat the soles of his feet, he says.
He’s now spokesman for the government-banned Bahraini National Committee for Martyrs and Victims of Torture. He and other activists have documented the security service’s human rights violations for a decade, he says. His activism includes work with the United Nations Committee Against Torture and appearances on Qatar’s Al Jazeera channel.
Al Khanjar says that on Aug. 15, 2010, three days after he returned from speaking about human rights to a committee at the House of Lords in London, plainclothes police knocked on his door in Bahrain at about 2:30 a.m. It was the start of a six- month ordeal.
For his first 85 days or so in custody, Al Khanjar saw no one from the outside, he says. For one agonizing stretch, his jailers forced him to stand without sleeping for five days. At other times they beat him with hoses and their hands and threatened him with sexual abuse, he says.
“They had collected their information from tracking calls,” he says, including whom he spoke with and what they said. “They told me a lot of things about our activities in the human rights field and political activities I’d participated in.”
And they showed him several pages of transcripts of his text messages. An interrogator held the papers in front of Al Khanjar, pointing out the Arabic words printed in black ink on white paper and reading aloud details such as the dates and recipients of the texts, he says.
Al Khanjar says he sent one of the messages on June 9, 2009, after a flight to Qatar to visit a friend. His trip was thwarted when Qatar refused him entry at the Bahrain government’s request. He suspected that his appearances on the satellite news channel, based in Qatar, explained the Bahraini government’s interest in his travel there. Al Khanjar fired off the text to a fellow activist. “What happened to me is because of Al Jazeera,” it read.
More than a year later, when Al Khanjar was in jail, authorities seized on a transcript of that message, asking what he meant by it, particularly the reference to Al Jazeera, he says. Suspicious of his explanation, officers threatened to put him in a solitary confinement cell with no toilet two floors down -- the same floor where they tortured prisoners.
“You cannot hear anything,” Al Khanjar says. “You don’t know the time. You don’t know if it’s day or night. No windows.”
Only after overhearing officers refer in radio chatter among themselves to their national security building as Jazeera did he conclude their interest in his innocuous text message was a misunderstanding that he had been making a reference to their facilities.
“They thought that I knew something about their code,” he says.
A prosecutor charged Al Khanjar with crimes that included establishing a group in violation of the law and inciting and participating in unauthorized meetings of more than five people for the purpose of undermining national security, according to a copy of the indictment translated by the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales.
An arm of the England and Wales lawyers association, the committee sent a delegation to Bahrain that observed an Oct. 28, 2010, hearing in the case against Al Khanjar and 22 others arrested at the same time.
The detainees testified about being tortured while in custody, according to the bar committee’s February 2011 report: beatings, particularly to the legs and ears; being kept in stress positions or naked for prolonged periods; hanging in a position called falaqa in which the detainee is suspended from a bar and the soles of his feet beaten; and, in some cases, sexual abuse.
The actions violated both international law and the laws of Bahrain, the report concluded. “Credible and pervasive allegations of mistreatment and torture, which are dismissed as fabrication by the Public Prosecutor, completely undermine the rule of law,” it stated.
A separate military tribunal later tried him and others -- many, like him, in absentia -- and convicted them on charges that included trying to overthrow the government. Al Khanjar, who denies the charges in this and the earlier case, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Company executives understood that they had the only monitoring-center computers in the country, based on conversations with Bahraini officials, one of those familiar with the situation says.
Schaake, 32, who represents the Netherlands in the European Parliament, says companies should be barred from exporting such equipment to countries with poor human rights records. U.S. and EU export laws and UN sanctions control just a narrow slice of technology such as weapons systems or data encryption. International embargoes that cover a broader range of equipment target only a small circle of the worst actors, such as Myanmar and North Korea.
“It is time for more pressure, for more transparency and accountability when it comes to these products and services,” Schaake says. As a first step, Schaake says surveillance systems involving information and communications technology should join military items such as missile parts on lists of restricted exports.
Schaake helped to sponsor a parliamentary resolution in February 2010 that called for the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, to ban exports of such technology to regimes that could abuse it. The commission hasn’t implemented the nonbinding resolution.
The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2010 barring federal contracts with any businesses that sold monitoring gear to Iran. An investigation ordered by Congress and completed in June by the Government Accountability Office was unable to identify any companies supplying the technology to Iran, partly because the business is so secretive, the agency reported.
“The United Nations should put pressure on those companies that supply equipment to these tyrant regimes,” he says.
Bahraini government regulator Aldoseri says the companies are all too happy to sell the equipment regardless of what happens once it’s installed.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Super PAC; not a super hero; more likely a super threat
Mike Toomey, Bill Burton and Edward Conard: Each of these men is a close ally of one of the would-be next presidents of the United States. All three insist they have no involvement in their close associates’ campaigns.
That’s because they’re helping direct so-called Super PACs -- Burton for President Barack Obama, Toomey for Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Conard for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. This role enables them to raise virtually unlimited funds from individuals, corporations and labor unions as long as they remain “independent” of the campaigns.
What these Super PACs do is to effectively lift the campaign-contribution limits, currently at $2,500 per individual, and allow wealthy interests and individuals to make the huge contributions that were the trademark of the era that ended with the Watergate scandal.
Political-action committees have long existed in U.S. politics. In the past, however, they couldn’t accept any corporate or labor-union contributions and individuals couldn’t give more than the legal limit. Two Supreme Court rulings and lax enforcement by the Federal Elections Commission led to the creation of the Super PACs, which, for the first time, can take unlimited money from special interests and individuals and use those funds on behalf of a specific presidential candidate.
They are supposed to be independent of the campaigns. It’s now clear that this separation is a travesty on both sides, making these entities and the big money the wave of the future.
“The idea that these Super PACs are independent from the candidates they’re supporting is absurd,” says Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that advocates campaign-finance reform and who has brought legal action against these new fundraisers. “They are simply a mechanism for massive circumvention of the contribution limits that are supposed to apply to federal campaigns.”
Just look at the central players. Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff, is now considered the leading business lobbyist in Texas. He plays a major role in Make Us Great Again, one of several independent efforts on behalf of Perry. He owns an island with David Carney, Perry’s campaign manager, and maintains close relations with the governor.
Burton, who directs Priorities USA Action, was Obama’s deputy press secretary during the 2008 campaign and served in a similar post during the first two years of his presidency.
Conard was a fellow managing partner with Romney of the private-equity firm Bain Capital and keeps a close association with the Republican presidential candidate. This year, he set up a shell company and secretly funneled a $1 million contribution to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Romney’s White House run. He was forced to disclose his identity after questions in the media about the origins of that large anonymous donation.
Conard’s shell company, which only existed for four months, was set up to evade the law that requires Super PACS to identify donors but sets no limits on donations.
Restore Our Future has received major funding from people such as the hedge-fund tycoon John Paulson, who has given more than $1 million; under Federal Elections Commission rules, Romney was able to attend a event held by this “independent” entity as long as he didn’t directly solicit funds for it.
This Super PAC is led by several of Romney’s 2008 campaign advisers, who are intimately acquainted with some of the aides who are running the 2012 effort.
Burton’s partner is Sean Sweeney, who was a White House political aide in the Obama administration before joining this “independent” group.
Coordination doesn’t have to be direct or official to be strategic and helpful. David Plouffe, the top Obama political aide, and other operatives have trained their fire recently on Romney; so has Priorities USA Action.
It’s a safe assumption that if there’s a Romney-Obama matchup in the general election, Restore Our Future and Priorities USA Action will be on the airwaves in the battleground states of Colorado, Virginia and Ohio, and not in California or Texas.
The most ambitious “independent” venture may be the one supporting Perry. Even before he announced his presidential campaign, candidates from half a dozen such groups were assembling. Make Us Great Again reportedly had gotten word out and most of the focus now seems to be coalescing around that group.
This Super PAC has two invaluable assets: It enables rich Texans who’ve long backed Perry to make big contributions, and it eliminates any competitive disadvantage the late-starting candidate might have in taking on rivals who have a larger pool of smaller contributors. If past experience is any guide, look for Make Us Great Again to attack opponents, starting with Romney.
If these Big Money-funded groups end up playing a vital role in the presidential race, it’s a certainty, as Wertheimer frets, that they will surface in most congressional elections the next time. By then, all the checks and balances instituted after Watergate will have been rolled back.
That’s because they’re helping direct so-called Super PACs -- Burton for President Barack Obama, Toomey for Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Conard for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. This role enables them to raise virtually unlimited funds from individuals, corporations and labor unions as long as they remain “independent” of the campaigns.
What these Super PACs do is to effectively lift the campaign-contribution limits, currently at $2,500 per individual, and allow wealthy interests and individuals to make the huge contributions that were the trademark of the era that ended with the Watergate scandal.
Political-action committees have long existed in U.S. politics. In the past, however, they couldn’t accept any corporate or labor-union contributions and individuals couldn’t give more than the legal limit. Two Supreme Court rulings and lax enforcement by the Federal Elections Commission led to the creation of the Super PACs, which, for the first time, can take unlimited money from special interests and individuals and use those funds on behalf of a specific presidential candidate.
They are supposed to be independent of the campaigns. It’s now clear that this separation is a travesty on both sides, making these entities and the big money the wave of the future.
“The idea that these Super PACs are independent from the candidates they’re supporting is absurd,” says Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that advocates campaign-finance reform and who has brought legal action against these new fundraisers. “They are simply a mechanism for massive circumvention of the contribution limits that are supposed to apply to federal campaigns.”
Just look at the central players. Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff, is now considered the leading business lobbyist in Texas. He plays a major role in Make Us Great Again, one of several independent efforts on behalf of Perry. He owns an island with David Carney, Perry’s campaign manager, and maintains close relations with the governor.
Burton, who directs Priorities USA Action, was Obama’s deputy press secretary during the 2008 campaign and served in a similar post during the first two years of his presidency.
Conard was a fellow managing partner with Romney of the private-equity firm Bain Capital and keeps a close association with the Republican presidential candidate. This year, he set up a shell company and secretly funneled a $1 million contribution to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Romney’s White House run. He was forced to disclose his identity after questions in the media about the origins of that large anonymous donation.
Conard’s shell company, which only existed for four months, was set up to evade the law that requires Super PACS to identify donors but sets no limits on donations.
Restore Our Future has received major funding from people such as the hedge-fund tycoon John Paulson, who has given more than $1 million; under Federal Elections Commission rules, Romney was able to attend a event held by this “independent” entity as long as he didn’t directly solicit funds for it.
This Super PAC is led by several of Romney’s 2008 campaign advisers, who are intimately acquainted with some of the aides who are running the 2012 effort.
Burton’s partner is Sean Sweeney, who was a White House political aide in the Obama administration before joining this “independent” group.
Coordination doesn’t have to be direct or official to be strategic and helpful. David Plouffe, the top Obama political aide, and other operatives have trained their fire recently on Romney; so has Priorities USA Action.
It’s a safe assumption that if there’s a Romney-Obama matchup in the general election, Restore Our Future and Priorities USA Action will be on the airwaves in the battleground states of Colorado, Virginia and Ohio, and not in California or Texas.
The most ambitious “independent” venture may be the one supporting Perry. Even before he announced his presidential campaign, candidates from half a dozen such groups were assembling. Make Us Great Again reportedly had gotten word out and most of the focus now seems to be coalescing around that group.
This Super PAC has two invaluable assets: It enables rich Texans who’ve long backed Perry to make big contributions, and it eliminates any competitive disadvantage the late-starting candidate might have in taking on rivals who have a larger pool of smaller contributors. If past experience is any guide, look for Make Us Great Again to attack opponents, starting with Romney.
If these Big Money-funded groups end up playing a vital role in the presidential race, it’s a certainty, as Wertheimer frets, that they will surface in most congressional elections the next time. By then, all the checks and balances instituted after Watergate will have been rolled back.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
UAE : Limited democracy, fears of corruption restrain voters
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), an oil-rich economic hub, is gearing up for the parliamentary elections, for the second time in its history. But fear of corruption and tepid public interest threaten to turn the country's limited experiment with democracy into a dud.
Some 470 people from the confederation’s seven emirates have registered as candidates for the September 24 elections. They will be vying for half of the 40 seats in the country's Federal National Council (FNC), with the other half being filled by members appointed by the UAE’s seven hereditary rulers. Established in 1971, the FNC maintains only advisory tasks, not legislative power.
"There is a widespread perception that the FNC is a meaningless talking shop with real political power lying elsewhere," Kristian Coates-Ulrichsen, deputy director of the Kuwait Research Program at the London School of Economics (LSE), told The Media Line.
The outbreak of the Arab Spring generated new pressures for political participation in the Gulf, and the UAE was no exception, Coates-Ulrichsen said. A petition signed by 133 prominent Emiratis in March called for the direct election of all FNC members and for it to be vested with full legislative and regulatory powers. Alongside the outbreak of violent unrest in Bahrain and Oman, and similar petitions for political reform in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, UAE authorities were feeling the heat of political pressure, perhaps for the first time in its 40-year history.
Not only does the FNC have very limited powers and is half appointed, only a small proportion of Emirati citizens will be allowed to vote, all of which may explain the widespread apathy. In the previous elections, held in December 2006, only 6,689 people, less than 1% of the country's population of one million, were entitled to vote. Moreover, the candidates will be vetted by government before the end of August, having to present a certificate of good conduct.
"Such a tightly controlled election runs counter to of the concept of participatory democracy and suggests that the election is more a public relations campaign for Western consumption than a genuine attempt at widening the distribution of power in the Emirates," Coates-Ulrichsen said.
A number of unnamed candidates told the Arab online news site Ilaf that some of the voters they met demanded money in return for voting for them. The candidates told the site that no legal mechanism currently exists to prevent vote buying.
Nor have elections brought any improvement in freedom of expression. To the contrary, human rights activists say the Arab Spring has caused officials to quash what little dissent was permitted. In April, for instance, they arrested five of the pro-reform activists who demanded constitutional reform and universal suffrage.
Coates-Ulrichsen of LSE said the intimidation of reformists in the UAE was also detrimental to the country's democratic drive.
"The arrest and continuing detention of Emiratis who called for political reform has had a chilling effect which dampens many people's desire to get involved in politics," he told The Media Line.
Let’s spin the wheel …..next on the movement towards Democracy…Syria, Saudi, Iran?
Let’s take of look at the dictatorships in your neighborhood (if you’re in the MENA region)….
SYRIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Tyranny -Discrimination of Women
WMD - Largest chemical weapons capability in the Middle East
Transit for Drugs Bound for Western Markets
Tens of thousands of Arab Syrian victims when regime ravaged Syrian Hama including the Grand Mosque
Muslim Turkey mobilized in 1998 the army for war against Arab Syria
Syrian official maps fake that the Turkish province Hatay is inside Syria
Invaded Israel in 1948 with the declared intent of destroying her
Invaded Arab Jordan (Black September 1970)
Occupied in 1948-1967 former Mandate for Palestine land (Himmah area)
Occupies Arab Jordanian land since 1970
Occupied Arab Lebanon from 1976 - 2005
Arab Jordan occupies land belonging to Arab Syria
The Golan Heights were transferred from the British Mandate of Palestine to the French Mandate of Syria in 1923, and are ruled by Israel since 1967
________________________________________
IRAN - DICTATORSHIP, ORG. OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Nuclear Ambitions - World Domination Ideology
Used Chemical Weapons During War With Muslim Iraq
Iraq-Iran War 1980 - 1988 Caused Over 1 Million Dead
Iranian President Calls for the Destruction of Israel
State Sponsored Anti-Semitism
State Sponsored Cult of Martyrdom and Blood
Religious Persecution - Public Stoning to Death and Other Cruel Executions
Discrimination of Women - "Ten Minute Marriages"
________________________________________
SAUDI ARABIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Homeland of arch terrorist Osama Bin Laden and most 9/11 terrorists
Refuge of cannibal, sadist and mass murderer Idi Amin of Uganda
Saudi royals paid Osama Bin Laden and Taliban £200m "protection money"
Saudi religious leader calls for slavery's legalization
Middle Age type of theocracy - Religious police - Charges of witchcraft
Transfer and ethnic mutilation
Apartheid against non-Muslims - Death for adultery & apostasy from Islam
Two major cities (Mecca & Medina) forbid entrance of non-Muslims
Churches of other religious denominations than Moslem do not exist
World's only state where cinemas are banned
World's only state where it is illegal for women to drive
Without written permission from a male guardian, women may not travel, get an education or work. Regardless of permissions, they are not allowed to drive, mix with men in public or leave home without covering themselves with black cloaks, called abayas.
Punishment by hand amputation, flogging & public beheading
Muslims worldwide indoctrinated by preachers funded from Saudi Arabia
Religious police prevents male firemen from rescuing girls burning to death
Despot King Fahd in Forbes Report 2003 "The World's Richest People"
________________________________________
MOROCCO - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Arab Morocco Occupies Saharawi Arab Republic
Claims EU (Spanish) areas: Canary Islands, Isla Perejil, Ceuta and Melilla
Women Can't Marry Without Male Guardian Consent
Illicit Drug Producer Bound for Western Markets
Built 2000-km separation wall to keep Saharawi guerilla out of occupied West Sahara
Saharawi Arabs Languish for Decades in World's Worst Refugee Camps
________________________________________
OMAN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Discrimination Against Women
________________________________________
UAE - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Imprisonment and Flogging for Marriage Across Faiths
No Democratically Elected Institutions or Political Parties
Judiciary's Decisions Subject to Review by Political Leadership
Law Specifically Prohibits Criticism of Government,
Ruling Families and Friendly Governments Under Penalty of Imprisonment
________________________________________
BAHRAIN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Hereditary Autocracy - No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Women Discrimination
________________________________________
ALGERIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
World Leader in Forced Disappearances
100,000 Persons Killed
Forced Arabization of Amazigh Culture
________________________________________
YEMEN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
About 100,000 Deaths in Civil War
Death for Apostasy - Women Can't Marry Without Guardian Consent
Most Females Genitally Mutilated During Childhood
________________________________________
SYRIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Tyranny -Discrimination of Women
WMD - Largest chemical weapons capability in the Middle East
Transit for Drugs Bound for Western Markets
Tens of thousands of Arab Syrian victims when regime ravaged Syrian Hama including the Grand Mosque
Muslim Turkey mobilized in 1998 the army for war against Arab Syria
Syrian official maps fake that the Turkish province Hatay is inside Syria
Invaded Israel in 1948 with the declared intent of destroying her
Invaded Arab Jordan (Black September 1970)
Occupied in 1948-1967 former Mandate for Palestine land (Himmah area)
Occupies Arab Jordanian land since 1970
Occupied Arab Lebanon from 1976 - 2005
Arab Jordan occupies land belonging to Arab Syria
The Golan Heights were transferred from the British Mandate of Palestine to the French Mandate of Syria in 1923, and are ruled by Israel since 1967
________________________________________
IRAN - DICTATORSHIP, ORG. OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE MEMBER
State Sponsor of Terrorism - Nuclear Ambitions - World Domination Ideology
Used Chemical Weapons During War With Muslim Iraq
Iraq-Iran War 1980 - 1988 Caused Over 1 Million Dead
Iranian President Calls for the Destruction of Israel
State Sponsored Anti-Semitism
State Sponsored Cult of Martyrdom and Blood
Religious Persecution - Public Stoning to Death and Other Cruel Executions
Discrimination of Women - "Ten Minute Marriages"
________________________________________
SAUDI ARABIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Homeland of arch terrorist Osama Bin Laden and most 9/11 terrorists
Refuge of cannibal, sadist and mass murderer Idi Amin of Uganda
Saudi royals paid Osama Bin Laden and Taliban £200m "protection money"
Saudi religious leader calls for slavery's legalization
Middle Age type of theocracy - Religious police - Charges of witchcraft
Transfer and ethnic mutilation
Apartheid against non-Muslims - Death for adultery & apostasy from Islam
Two major cities (Mecca & Medina) forbid entrance of non-Muslims
Churches of other religious denominations than Moslem do not exist
World's only state where cinemas are banned
World's only state where it is illegal for women to drive
Without written permission from a male guardian, women may not travel, get an education or work. Regardless of permissions, they are not allowed to drive, mix with men in public or leave home without covering themselves with black cloaks, called abayas.
Punishment by hand amputation, flogging & public beheading
Muslims worldwide indoctrinated by preachers funded from Saudi Arabia
Religious police prevents male firemen from rescuing girls burning to death
Despot King Fahd in Forbes Report 2003 "The World's Richest People"
________________________________________
MOROCCO - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Arab Morocco Occupies Saharawi Arab Republic
Claims EU (Spanish) areas: Canary Islands, Isla Perejil, Ceuta and Melilla
Women Can't Marry Without Male Guardian Consent
Illicit Drug Producer Bound for Western Markets
Built 2000-km separation wall to keep Saharawi guerilla out of occupied West Sahara
Saharawi Arabs Languish for Decades in World's Worst Refugee Camps
________________________________________
OMAN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Discrimination Against Women
________________________________________
UAE - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Imprisonment and Flogging for Marriage Across Faiths
No Democratically Elected Institutions or Political Parties
Judiciary's Decisions Subject to Review by Political Leadership
Law Specifically Prohibits Criticism of Government,
Ruling Families and Friendly Governments Under Penalty of Imprisonment
________________________________________
BAHRAIN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
Hereditary Autocracy - No Political Parties - No Freedom of Speech - Judges at the Government's Pleasure - No Workers’ Rights - Women Discrimination
________________________________________
ALGERIA - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
World Leader in Forced Disappearances
100,000 Persons Killed
Forced Arabization of Amazigh Culture
________________________________________
YEMEN - DICTATORSHIP, ARAB LEAGUE MEMBER
About 100,000 Deaths in Civil War
Death for Apostasy - Women Can't Marry Without Guardian Consent
Most Females Genitally Mutilated During Childhood
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