Time to make an app which would analyze your social media presence and for any country would show what laws you have violated and what punishment is waiting you where. Premium version will be showing that "cost" before you're to post something.
At this point I'd probably just pay a 'sentiment analysis' company that I found off google that's been doing all this stuff for ~10 years.
Lots of correlation models that need to be updated as people learn what gets logged as certain sentiment and then they change their language to not be part of that.
Then I realized you might be asking about "how do you identify a sarcastic comment that looks like praise?" ..and it seems there's no easy answer to that.
So I guess after all this, I've gone from my initial sarcastic remark (the top of this post) to 10 mins later scratching my head and thinking that this business idea is more difficult that going back to our government and demanding more change.
I hate to break it to you, but if a country want to lock you up, they will find a way to do it. I’m an American & I’m more afraid of being railroaded by the USA justice system than any of the 32 other countries I’ve visited, including several countries in the Middle East.
What if you book a flight say between Australia and Europe. After swapping planes in Hong Kong, on the way to Germany there's an in flight emergency and the plane lands in Dubai.
And you had been previously critical of the regime.
I admit that problem space expands if you are an exuberant social media user who travels frequently and transits a variety of jurisdictions and airspace. Realistically, you're screwed if you said the wrong thing on social and someplace you're traveling through wants to grab you (and your country of citizenship doesn't want to expend the effort to repatriate you from the hands of an authoritarian regime).
My personal risk tolerance is that which I don’t transit the Middle East, ever, when traveling internationally, and I have no social media usage or presence.
It was the location of the movie "Sex and the City 2". The UAE has put a huge effort into internationally branding themselves as a luxury tourism destination. I imagine there are loads of visitors who have no idea what the laws or legal system are like.
google "UAE Sonapur" for some documented examples of the near-slavery condition that some of the imported workers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh live in.
You mean being treated like a slave, beaten sometimes raped, have their password taken away etc. is not so bad because, hey they still get paid, so not real slavery? (and no that is not the same same conditions as in the Philippines, Pakistan or Bangladesh)
I suppose you mean “passport”. This is also illegal, government has been cracking down on this for years. The MOHRE hotline for these issues is advertised everywhere, it only takes a quick call and the police will come recover your passport.
But yeah, I guess it’s pointless to try and have a conversation with someone engaging as dishonestly as you.
I obviously don’t mean that violence or rape are okay, and it’s really shitty of you to suggest that. What next? Will you accuse me of molesting children too?
What do you think the alternatives should be?
Should Indian and Pakistani companies pay more to Indian and Pakistani workers they bring to Dubai? Should they leave them in India and let them work in even worse conditions?
Who do you think should dictate how much more Indian companies should pay Indian laborers which btw already are getting way more than they can get at home?
Many people crying about "slavery in Dubai" don't fully understand what slavery is and how Dubai works. What I am suggesting here, is that, perhaps, this notion is just a second-hand opinion you should consider changing your mind about. If you are open to it, that is.
Yep, it’s sort of hilarious to see us rich Westerners criticizing work conditions in Dubai while our countries simply make it impossible for these same people to get visas to work in the West.
UAE is doing more to improve the lives of these people than the West ever has, even if it doesn’t look all that pretty. It’s very unfortunate that photos of denied visa applications will never evoke the same response.
If someone confiscates your passport in Dubai you can have it back within 24 hours by just calling MOHRE at 80060.
It is illegal to do this, enforcement is pretty aggressive.
As to denial of visas? At least the UAE offers these people a chance at a better life, Western countries give them nothing. A slight QOL improvement is much better than none.
If it's illegal to confiscate passports in Dubai why is it so widespread and commonplace? Is it like smoking MJ in most states - it's "illegal" but unless cops want a reason to arrest you they'll just ignore you and keep on driving?
It’s not nearly as widespread in 2022 as you might like to think.
To get a low-skilled work visa in Dubai you have to sit through an hour long lecture explaining these rights, including what to do if your employer takes your passport.
You are advised to not give your passport to your employer except to have your visa stamped, and then immediately demand it back.
This country is modernizing very rapidly, things that were true 5 years ago are often not true anymore.
They trick the workers and then enslave then. Often then employer withholds and does not pay wages. It’s not an opportunity to have a better life if they don’t actually get paid
We can definitely say people should not work like slaves in Dubai and that it would be great if the conditions were better in their original countries.
I'm drawing the line at the confiscated passports, threat of jail and terrible living conditions - if you can't safely leave your work, you're a slave. It doesn't matter what the alternative at your home is.
The slavery calls are less about the low wages and more about things like workers having their passports confiscated or being abused/killed by their employers.
But what do I know? Maybe because I’m in America I can’t call being forced to work and unable to leave slavery cause it’s a second hand opinion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When talking to flat-earthers giving them logical arguments and more information is pointless as they will keep brushing off info that contradicts their world-view and will keep finding info that supports it.
The same story about this whole Dubai-slavery thing.
No one confiscates passports, it is a nonsense. But what can I tell a person in America to make them doubt ideas they fixate to?
Now go ahead and google up that one case when somebody did confiscate a passport a few decades ago and extrapolate this to all the millions of workers in UAE.
You see what I mean?
Confiscate is probably too extreme a word, but when I lived in UAE many employers held onto (e.g. in the office safe) their employees passports. At some point I think the government realized this could be abused, and then there was an centralized office (at least in Jebel Ali, it was different in Abu Dhabi) where your employer asked you to have them hold your passport. To get your passport you had to get a letter from your employer saying it was okay for you to get it. Or, in my case, I left my job and got it back.
Personally, I hated the fact that I had to ask my employer for my passport when I got accepted into Grad school in the US and had to tell my employer I needed it for a few days to get a visa. I never questioned the legality of it though, and according to this it's not legal for employers to force you to hand over your passport.
But like most legal things, when you are on a work visa you are scared of anything that might harm that. So you don't challenge or ask questions. It's pretty common for people on H1B to stay at an job they hate even though changing jobs on H1B is supposed to be easy. I certainly stayed at a bad job longer than I wanted to until my green card process hit a certain point. I think legally I could have changed earlier, but the company immigration attorney certainly gaslighted me on many things, and I was just too scared to take any risks with visa stuff. It's easy for a company to exploit that fear.
I looked it up and found more than “the one case” where it occurred. Apparently it happened frequently enough the government took steps to explicitly outlaw it in 2002 which indicates it was a practice that affected more than the one case you’re downplaying it as.
Admittedly this was 20 years ago and the government was taking steps to prevent it so I could believe the practice has mostly disappeared if given proof, but since we all know illegal behavior continues for a while after laws are enacted and enforced I’d still need to see that proof.
You’re argument about this not being real sounds a lot like when my countrymen claim our legal system doesn’t enslave people despite it being explicitly carved out in the constitution to allow it and prisoners being forced to work. It’s uncomfortable to face the truths but just claiming it’s the same in the face of evidence doesn’t help
Look, I spent a decade there, as an employee and as an employer. I know what UAE ministry of labor will do to a company in case if they get a single complaint but, hey, what arguments can I possibly find to change your mind? You will keep finding facts that support your point of view.
Somebody with an agenda told you "Dubai slavery" long time ago and it is now easier for you to follow the narrative formed in your head. I get it, but the reality is different.
I looked up cases of the event, found multiple instances of it happening, and found evidence that the UAE government responded to the existence of the event happening which confirms from the government sources that it existed.
I keep finding facts that support this view because the facts are still there. Why are you acting like this isn’t real at all? I even asked for some evidence that this is no longer occurring which I could believe given the UAE government has taken steps to combat it, but you just want to call people flat earthers.
At this point the only one who seems to have an agenda is you and your attempts to shut down any conversation around the topic
I agree that many workers go to the UAE (and Saudi Arabia and other places) because they can get a much better deal there than they could get at home.
However, it is also true that too many of those migrant workers are then treated atrociously, with little legal recourse, and with a casual chauvinism and racism that far exceeds what is often labeled "racism" in progressive societies.
And that is particularly grating given that those oil-rich countries could afford not only fancy buildings and museums, but also decent labour standards.
> Should Indian and Pakistani companies pay more to Indian and Pakistani workers they bring to Dubai?
Yes indeed.
> Who do you think should dictate how much more Indian companies should pay [...]?
As usual, the government of the country they operate in. In this case, the UAE governments. It would probably mean somewhat more expensive buildings for the UAE, and somewhat less profits for said Indian and Pakistani companies.
So a guy lives in what can be best described as a "pit", makes an equivalent of, say, $200/m.
Among many contenders wins job in Dubai, moves to a company-provided, airconditioned camp (built by no other that Hughes, who builds camps for Exxon, BP and others around the world), eats company-provided food, wears company-provided closes, watches company-provided TV, gets shuttled to and from work for free and makes $600/m. Works his ass off to stay employed, obviously.
In a few years he may save up enough to marry any girl in the village. With some luck he may be given a chance to learn welding. If so, he will buy a new Hero Honda, or, even better, an automobile.
What should change in this scenario so you would stop calling this a "slavery"?
Be provided an exit at any point. If the worker deems the actual(not advertised) working conditions unacceptable, they should be enabled to return home. Otherwise they are defacto captive, i.e. a slave.
That's right. Employees are free to go and can head to the airport at any moment. Employer must arrange and pay for the departure within a month. If it does not happen, government arranges the exit, pays the travel expenses and deducts the money from company's escrow account.
I know you're going to get downvoted to hell, but I'm going to give you an upvote.
Many people who have enough leisure time to spend on HN and Reddit just don't understand the conditions many people grow up in. Not just India and Pakistan, but Philippines, Indonesia, and all the countries where you see economic migrants to any gulf country. Imagine growing up in unbelievable poverty with no educational opportunities or support, and with the external and internal pressure to financially support your siblings, parents, family and so they can survive and not just repeat the cycle you were born into.
It's an insane situation, and the only solution humans seem to have come up with is to encourage people with money buy stuff that's made by people who cannot afford that same stuff. In one country it's tall buildings, in another it's phones and t-shirts.
I mean - that's sort of the ultra-capitalist creed right? It's impossible for us to solve poverty in any manner other than exporting work to make cheap t-shirts and since slavery is close to the same level of suffering it must be alright?
Global wealth inequality issues are certainly not easy to solve, but we don't just need to shrug and say "I guess that's the way the world needs to work" - there is an extreme amount of excess in western countries, we've got several people who have literally nothing better to do with their money than launch private rockets into space for PR so I don't think it's fair to say "it's near- slavery or t-shirts".
As the wealthiest nation on earth and the never-sated consumer that drives most of the world's economy America is in a position where it can demand better working conditions, it can say t-shirts at walmart can't reasonably cost 5$... but it is choosing not to do so. And, with all that said, the UAE in it's (hopefully now in the past) passport seizing days was still far worse.
>And, with all that said, the UAE in it's (hopefully now in the past) passport seizing days was still far worse.
Honestly, when I lived in UAE I had to submit my passport to a centralized system that held the passports of people who worked in that commercial area. To this day I don't know if I had to legally give them my passport or if my employer simply encouraged me to do it and presented it to me as as if I didn't have a choice.
A few weeks ago I had to take a sick family member to the emergency room here in the US at 3AM because they vomited blood. All medical resources online said it could not wait till morning as it could be internal bleeding. They were given an X-ray, an external exam by a nurse and a doctor, and told that it was a mild adverse reaction to some common medication and to swap to something else. Nothing to worry about. Time from leaving home to back home was 75 minutes, tops. Bill was $3500. My employer only offers HDHP options so a lot of that is on me once the insurance company and hospital are done playing their stupid games.
I think all employers in UAE are required to provide health-insurance. Prior to that, everybody there legally had governmental healthcare, but that has changed as medical costs have risen private insurance has become an option.
Thankfully I have insurance and I work in tech. It hits my budget and stings, I can afford to pay it. But if I didn't have health insurance and had family in my home country who depended on me sending money every month, that bill would have wrecked my life.
I realize passports versus medical benefits is not a sensible comparison at all.
Nobody seems to write stories about how governmental treatment of migrant workers in UAE has improved a lot over the last 2 decades. There's tons of room to improve, but it has gotten better.
Yeah, this is not normal. Now before you can get a low-skilled worker visa you have to sit through an hour long lecture explaining your rights, they tell you over and over to not let anyone take your passport and who to call if someone does.
These countries have been modernizing so fast that it’s really pointless to talk about how things were a couple of years ago.
An affluent country like Dubai could afford to treat these workers a lot better locally than they may be treated in their homelands.
I reject the premise that we live in a world of unregulated capitalism where free-markets force us all to engage in a race to the bottom when it comes to working conditions, and the modern world also rejects that with a plethora of examples: how can US workers who demand trivial things like sane working hours and health care possibly compete with people overseas who can do the same work while being paid peanuts - it's because we as a society can demand that. The people of the UAE could similarly demand that labourers be paid better and receive better treatment - it's not an unavoidable economic outcome that near slavery exists, it's a choice.
In Dubai, like America, the companies should be forced to treat domestic workers fairly. It'd be really swell if those companies treated workers fairly in India as well and the population of Dubai could put pressure on India to improve working conditions but that's a sovereignty and economic question. I think it'd be really swell if standards of living across the globe were a lot more equalized, but that's not the world we live in. We can fix our own back yard but other nations are blocked by different base standards of living - we can influence that by, for instance, preferring to buy products from companies that treat overseas labour more fairly which will slowly transfer wealth and raise up those well off or, if you're bezos rich, I guess you could just try and wave a magic wand... but there just isn't enough domestic GDP to support higher wages in some countries.
I can't find it.. but i read an article last week that went through how these oppressive governments are using sports (and their money) to build up their image. Russia did it before their first invasion. China did it twice with the olympics.
the use of sports and FIFA is an example of this.
*qatar not uae, is the absolute worst place to hold a giant soccer tournament. They have to use special AC units inside giant stadiums (built on deaths of lots of migrant workers) because it's a hot desert. But they claim they are still 'green'
Saudi using art is an example too. They paid a ton of money to use the name Louvre even though their museum has nothing to do with the institution. ironically he refused to loan his $450 million 'da vinci' to the real museum. Evidently sitting on a yacht hidden because good chance it's not by da vinci's hand.
As a queer person who loves to travel (or did before covid) there are some countries i just refuse to visit, despite the awesome cultural heritage. I know that citizens don't always necessarily agree, but many do. And I just can't support the expansion of authoritarianism - and potentially risk my life.
> UAE is the absolute worst place to hold a giant soccer tournament. They have to use special AC units inside giant stadiums (built on deaths of lots of migrant workers)
Screw the ACs needed( a bit less because the tournament was shifted to the winter when the temperatures would be more acceptable), most of the stadia built will have to be demolished afterwards because Qatar is a miniscule country that doesn't need that infrastructure and couldn't use it afterwards. It's one giant waste of everything, just to wash Qatar's image ( I'm not even sure it's working, before that most people wouldn't have heard of it, now there's decent chance it's known for bribery and slavery).
It might seem like a random topic for me to know, but I lived in UAE for a portion of my life and the government is pretty mindful of having their name associated with some of the themes you'd typically see with that particular TV series. So I was quite surprised when they claimed it was Abu Dhabi, and not surprised that they actually filmed it elsewhere.
That’s interesting: here in the UK, there’s often major news stories about very punitive actions taken against tourists in Dubai for things like drinking in public or having sex on a beach. I’d guess a lot of people “know” that the system is strict but are naive enough to believe it won’t apply to them for whatever reason.
Yeah, I am basically horrified about everything about the idea of visiting the UAE, other than that they have interesting cities and nice beaches. I would never consider taking a vacation there.
Relatedly, the sheer number of YouTube adverts for Qatar I’ve had recently… the adverts have nice happy jingly music and cute little avatars exploring Qatar’s filthy lucre ^H^H^H-uh I mean beautiful buildings, shopping centers, pools and the like. Basically trying to “adwash” their slavery.
Keep in mind GOOG gets half that money. 100% if it's on my videos they departnered me from because I didn't meet their new goalpost of 1000 subs but then later decided it's still acceptable puts ads on. Asshats.
I mean, in Sex and the City 2 the ladies get deported from the country due to a public display of affection. If you actually watched the movie you'd realize its a damning cinematic critique with a witty script and stellar acting.
You should also be terrified by the fact that one of the royals, Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is seen on video torturing a business partner, and suffered no repercussions after the video came out in 2009.
The fact it gets so much media coverage suggests its rarity. The odds of being detained in uae for social media posts is very low. The UAE gets tons of tourism. Your odds of being roughed up by police in America are higher.
Depends on who you are I guess. If you're gay or trans, you're in for a very bad time. While they probably won't actually punish you (besides roughing you up and throwing you in jail for a bit) if you're a foreigner from a large, western country, you're still not exactly "fine".
Imagine for a moment that in the UAE it's illegal to not keep your right hand on your left shoulder - sure you can make it work and conform, but you're compromising a lot of your natural behavior to fit in for no good reason. That cost might be worth it to some people but it's definitely a cost and it's an unreasonable one.
You'll need to be conscious of how you walk with your partner, you'll need to carefully consider how it'll look if you go out for a fancy dinner together and invent a cover story to cloak your actions, you'll probably be charged a gay-tax by being forced to rent separate hotel rooms or at least a room with double beds in it.
I find the description of "just keep it in your pants" to be offensively reductive.
The article is about someone who was arrested for social media posts made years before arriving in the country. "Keeping it in your pants for the week or two while you are there" does not cut it.
UAE is a fast growing international hub. Nobody is terrified. No more than people are terrified of traveling to germany because tourists get arrested for silly nonsense like a nazi salute or thailand because tourists get arrested insulting the royals or indonesia because tourists get arrested for drugs.
Not saying I agree with anyone getting arrested for silly nonsense. But for 99% of the travelers, it doesn't matter.
>Another joke Dr. Kharrat tweeted urged the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to attack Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, as reported by French newspaper L’Orient Le Jour.
I'm gonna be honest how can anyone actually think tweeting that is a good idea.
I am pretty sure in case they thought you were actually connected to actual terrorists you would be with a bag over your head and on your way to god knows where before you could say extraordinary rendition.
The fact is countries detain people all the time for a variety of reasons. I am not saying it's right, it just is.
In general it's a bad plan to put yourself in the hands of your opponents, especially if they are not very big on human rights and the rule of law.
Hostage diplomacy is very much a thing[1]. In general though I would think for most westerners it would be rather safe to visit the UAE, I think it's fairly aligned to the west and unlikely to detain people just to make a fuss.
No mind you the US disappeared people for much less, be it in Guantanamo or some of the black ops prison they had all over the place in "collaborating countries" after 9/11.
There is a difference in scale and directness to this in UAE though.
No. France did nothing when thousands of people celebrated Notre Dame burning.
Throughout the Trump presidency making threats against the president was pretty much the bread and butter of Twitter.
They did arrest some people who cheered for the beheading of the high-school teacher though IIRC. France has pretty harsh (and often used) laws regulating speech, and they are ambiguous enough that they can be used pretty broadly.
Just an example:
>Thousands of people are convicted every year for “contempt of public officials”, a vaguely defined criminal offence that law enforcement and judicial authorities have applied in massive numbers to silence peaceful dissent.
> “The talk about this tweet is fake news,” a source close to the gynecologist and an MP of the Free Patriotic Movement, to which Kharrat is allegedly close, told L’Orient-Le Jour on condition of anonymity.
> He claimed that this tweet appeared after Kharrat’s arrest, saying that it was not published on the doctor’s personal account, but on that of an UAE national
Doesn't worry me a bit. I'd already be looking at 2 years in prison just for being gay. But then, there's a whole bunch of the world that I wouldn't travel to.
Ehh, ya know, that is just a polarizing characterization. Most people just don't agree with what is happening to them. It does not mean most of those people that support their freedom and right from persecution would travel there or that it supports their views directly. Genocide isn't cool, ya know. Freedom limiting social systems aren't either, but that is a separate issue.
> As long as you're not engaging in homosexual sex
I think most would agree this is 'being gay'. The most important part, for some. So yeah I think it's fair to say GP would be arrested unless s/he actively hides who s/he is, which is a gay person.
Nope. A friend of mine was thrown in jail and tortured for about a week over a facebook photo of her and her girlfriend looking at eachother and smiling -- with a comment from a friend that said "you two look so cute!" She endured about a week and a half of starvation, sleep deprivation, and being yelled at and sexually harrassed by guards at random intervals before her trial, trying to elicit a confession that she's gay. She lucked out: her cousin was a judge, who managed to take over the case, and dismissed it. She fled the country, thankfully.
There are lots of cases of guys being thrown in jail and being fined for something as simple as long hair or wearing earrings. Not sex. Not "spreading ideology". I'm not just gay, my facebook page also has a picture of me and my partner, and my relationship status, "married," is public. And I'm locked out of facebook forever, so I can't even update any of that.
Given the experience of my friend and of dozens of cases that I've read about, no, people don't just get jailed for sex or speech. It goes way beyond that.
> The rules are unfortunately different depending on where you come from.
does not square with
> It’s kind of meaningless to worry about things that used to happen years ago in a country that’s modernizing so fast.
Not needing to worry about this is a privilege that I wouldn't enjoy. Glad to hear this isn't a problem on your Instagram, but that's damned thin evidence for me to risk my life for.
You know, after such a long (and recent!) history of violent and targeted oppression, that's a really tough question. Do you understand that? To start with, maybe another 5 years without any shit like what happened to my friend before I'd even consider it? So, there isn't precisely a threshold on "sufficient evidence" -- I'd be looking for a complete lack of evidence.
Luxury hotels can afford to bribe cops and judges. The organization is safe (as in, the organization won't get in trouble). But, I don't particularly care for gay clubs. What happens if I stray outside of an unmarked tourist zone, maybe pop over to a random market and a cop doesn't like the look of me? Moreover, what if a random citizen doesn't like the look of me? Sadly, a few of my friends (not Instagram friends, actual people that I see IRL) have been physically assaulted for being gay or trans in Canada for fuck's sake, rural and urban; one is paralyzed below the neck because he got stabbed for being gay. Safety isn't just about laws, it's also about policing (which doesn't always follow the law, and good luck challenging anything as a non-citizen), it's also about culture.
But now you've got me curious. Why are you so invested in convincing me that it's A-okay to visit a place that is notorious for its mistreatment of a specific population that I belong to? I'm not about to try to convince some Sikhs that rural USA is safe, right?
Besides, those laws are typically selectively enforced precisely because they can, they're ideal for the purpose. Don't like someone, tough. Don't like someone and their gay? Nailed and no recourse because ahhh gay person.
I think your five years sounds about right, if I were in that position I might add another five or just simply never spend a minute longer in a place like that than I had to.
> Sadly, a few of my friends (not Instagram friends, actual people that I see IRL) have been physically assaulted for being gay or trans in Canada for fuck's sake, rural and urban; one is paralyzed below the neck because he got stabbed for being gay.
The people who I follow on Instagram that are openly gay on their profiles are also real people I have met many times in the UAE. These aren’t instagram friends, their profiles were just relevant in response to you bringing up social media profiles.
UAE is probably one of the least likely places in the world where you might be assaulted for being gay or trans. The government cares about optics more than anything, and would come down hard on anyone doing something like that.
> What happens if I stray outside of an unmarked tourist zone, maybe pop over to a random market and a cop doesn't like the look of me?
Nothing, UAE cops are nothing like Western cops. They’re paid very well and would rather avoid creating unnecessary trouble in their lives.
If you’re white, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that you’d end up having a negative interaction with UAE law enforcement unless you go out of your way to make powerful enemies.
I’m not saying UAE is great, I’m not saying it’s not a terribly corrupt place that can turn incredibly nasty sometimes. I’m just saying it’s a perfectly safe place for gay westerners.
Maybe, maybe not, we don't know the entire story. We don't agree with torture obviously, but at the same time, if that story is true, it may fall under publicizing homosexuality which I mentioned in my post, and the law is the law.
> simple as long hair
Depends on what this long hair is. Many bedouins have long hair for example, and it's perfectly fine.
> wearing earrings.
Earrings are for women. Effemination of men is not allowed.
> Not sex. Not "spreading ideology"
Those two examples can fall under spreading ideology (context dependent for the long hair obviously).
regardless, if that law is still on paper, it will be used against people, if not for just being homosexual, then as a cover for some other agenda. All countries have such laws that are practically unenforced but when the government wants "to teach somebody a lesson", these laws are the first ones brought out of their arsenal.
I think they would just make something up if they wanted someone and there was no applicable crime. I would actually feel better about knowing I would be accused of something I actually did and that there is nothing wrong with, rather than having to worry about them planting child porn or framing me for murder. Governments don't care about truth and framing people is usually quite simple, but if the truth is enough and they don't need to harm my reputation, it would probably be even simpler for them to go with the truth.
I wonder how someone who publicly joked about supporting ISIS or Al-Qaeda and hoping they strike the new WTC would be greeted if they arrived to the US.
If we were to rank "civilized" by restrictions on speech, as you seem to be doing here, the US would be so far ahead that it's not even a comparison. Like of all things to go "America bad, europe good" on, free speech is absolutely not it.
(Yes, the excuse is that Europe has a different definition of free speech but the UAE would probably say the same. And even then I don't see how the US would be uncivilized according to the european definition of free speech lol)
Are you implying you'd get arrested? I remember attending a Palestine/BDS protest in NYC a few years ago and nothing happening to me even as a canadian (muslim arab) visitor.
I agree though that the restrictions on supporting BDS in some parts of the US are completely absurd. And I always find it funny that conservatives turn a completely blind eye to those laws (especially since it's in Texas! Pretty ironic). Yet the same laws often also apply in europe, and they are usually a lot stricter so my original point stands.
>Hervieu pointed to a recent ruling by the Court of Cassation, France’s court of final appeal, which upheld the criminal convictions of 12 BDS activists who burst into a supermarket in 2009 wearing “Boycott Israel” shirts and handing out fliers that read, “Buying Israeli products means legitimising crimes in Gaza.”
>The legislation means that what BDS activists regarded as political statements denouncing Israel’s violations of international law could be – and indeed were – treated by French courts as an "incitement" to hatred.
I wonder where you get this theory from. Because it's illegal IN GERMANY to lie about the holocaust?
The US' "free" speech mantra has become a running gag with the post-9/11 developments already. I is peaking right now with all the evangelically influenced madness that is happening there.
There is a significant difference between snarky jabs at a regime and open support of groups who have in the past (and seek to again in the future) commit violent international terrorism.
If you openly support those kinds of groups, you absolutely SHOULD be stopped and interviewed/interrogated at the border. The 'humor' part has to be evaluated (e.g. if someone is always cracking weird jokes vs someone who suddenly pulls a Trumpian rant-one liner and tries to pass if off as ha-ha when it's really just the quiet part out loud).
I don't know about the US but in some parts of Europe I'd agree the result would be similar to what happened here:
>In 2013, a French mother was sentenced for “glorifying a crime” after she allowed her son, named Jihad, to go to school wearing a shirt that said “I am a bomb.”
There is huge danger when criminal prosecution is automated. A machine has no sense of proportion or tolerance. That is why we allow police officers, prosecuters and judges to drop cases or just cite people.
Not exactly sure how this doctor got arrested but if they automatically scan feeds on arrival and then process them by strict adherence to law, that is bad.
If you live the sword, you'll die by the sword. So yes you should be terrified of the UAE but you shouldn't have any illusions about what this country is about.
Unfortunately, Lebanon is a complete basket case of a country. So many well educated Lebanese are forced to find work in Gulf countries with repressive regimes. They pay well to buy your silence.
Seeing the headline my first immediate first guess was "oh he insulted the royal family". The first sentence confirms it. There are a number of places in the world that are like this. Qatar and Thailand spring immediately to mind.
It can even go beyond the ruling family. There was a US helicopter pilot (IIRC) who wrote something disparaging about his Qatari employer on Facebook while in the United States who was arrested upon his return to Qatar for it.
You have to be aware of the laws of whatever country you're going to and respect them. Ignore them at your own peril. You don't really get to complain it. Your choices are either to go and follow and law and not go. Ignorance is no excuse.
I'd actually be way more wary of taking a job in some of these countries. To leave Qatar, for eample, you need an exit visa. Basically, your employer has to consent. This system is ripe for abuse and has been abused many times. Employers use it to withhold wages in exchange for giving their permission. Personally, I would never work in such a place.
Yep this. Feels like folks in this thread expect the $general_western_ethos to apply everywhere, and then are outraged when it doesn't. That's not to say we can't disagree with the country's laws, but if you visit the country then it's their land, their laws. Anything else would be crazy on account of the inverse: someone from another country could do something very illegal in the US and insist it's fine on account of being allowed in their home country (marriage laws come to mind).
There are soooo many UAE arrest stories. All the following are non-muslim non-citizen people, so they can't claim any kind of citizen or religious jurisdiction:
- A woman had a glass of wine while flying to UAE on UAE own airline!!!!
#1: The swedish iranian woman travelled without a valid passport and started filming the security guard when questioned about it.
#2: Sounds like at least one of them was pretty drunk. Men regularly walk hand in had in arab societies, even only holding the pinky! Given that its the same source as #1, I wont hold my breath.
#3 "a simple peck on the cheek" are you kidding me? ever been to Dubai?!
No, being a British citizen did not protect Matthew Hedges from being sentenced to life imprisonment on trumped up charges of espionage (he was eventually pardoned and released):
Western governments are as craven in appeasing the UAE and Saudi kleptocracies, because of their wealth, as poor countries like India or Pakistan that hire themselves as mercenaries for the emirs dirty work (like kidnapping princess Latina of Dubai). Calling them medieval would be a grave insult to the Dark Ages.
“The Houthis promise to bomb Burj Khalifa. My God, please let this information be true,”
Is the tweet in question. It is worth noting that we’re not sure yet that the tweet is true.
But lets assume it is:
Do people really think that this tweet should be enough to detain/arrest him?
People in the US and in Lebanon (most of the world too) make countless of posts vilifying and wishing politicians dead.
The guy is a Christian doctor from Lebanon visiting for tourism/work. He has no impact or connections on houthis.
I also promise there’s countless of Lebanese people with similar or worse tweets visiting UAE.
Putting my conspiracy hat on:
Elections are coming up in Lebanon, arresting this doctor will make major news in Lebanon.
This will illicit two types of reaction there, people will be cheering this person’s arrest or will be cheering for a more hardline stance and distancing against UAE.
There are parties that claim to have good connections to UAE royalty (more like serfs) who will use this to say that this wouldn’t happen under their rule.
Dictatorships over time become police states. In Lebanon there is a healthy history of political satire, thanks in part to the fact that there is no real government. The doctors mistake was thinking that any sort of "freedom" of speech he had in Lebanon would be protected. Unfortunately not the case.
I lived in the UAE for 3 years, and think the reality is more complicated than the article's "every visitor to the UAE should be terrified" makes it out to be.
Is the UAE a dictatorship? Absolutely - the newspaper is censored, and publicly challenging or speaking ill of the government is a Bad Idea that everyone knows not to do.
Is it the autocratic dystopia that the article makes it out to be? Also no; I didn't have any problems during my time there, nor did any friends that I know of (including three gay friends). The UAE is basically caught between both traditional Muslim and Western democratic influences, and it's not strictly one or the other. As long as you're not challenging the government or doing anything Muslims would consider bad taste (e.g. public PDA), you're generally left alone.
Which meant I was surprised to learn about the jailing on account of a joke about the name "Nahyan", until I saw, "Another joke Dr. Kharrat tweeted urged the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to attack Dubai’s Burj Khalifa".
Iran and the UAE _really_ don't like each other, and the UAE maintains a strong security state at least in part because of it. Urging a Houthi attack on the Burj Khalifa would be taken very seriously, and I'd surmise 1) he ended up on a watchlist when he first made it and 2) the UAE is now using him as political pressure on Lebanon.
To be clear, I'm not at all condoning the UAE's actions here as they don't align with my personal values. That said, I'm not surprised: the UAE takes perceived threats to the state very seriously and doesn't claim to allow free speech, so Kharrat was doing a (from an Emirati perspective) Very Bad Thing that most visitors to the UAE aren't likely to.
I shouldn't be terrified by the mistreatment of millions of South Asian laborers in these oppressive oil-gas countries, but I should be terrified because of this random dude!! No thanks, journal de Septentrion!
166 comments
[ 10.4 ms ] story [ 443 ms ] threadLots of correlation models that need to be updated as people learn what gets logged as certain sentiment and then they change their language to not be part of that.
Then I realized you might be asking about "how do you identify a sarcastic comment that looks like praise?" ..and it seems there's no easy answer to that.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053951720972735
https://wpmu.mah.se/nmict162group7/?p=180
So I guess after all this, I've gone from my initial sarcastic remark (the top of this post) to 10 mins later scratching my head and thinking that this business idea is more difficult that going back to our government and demanding more change.
And you had been previously critical of the regime.
Now what?
My personal risk tolerance is that which I don’t transit the Middle East, ever, when traveling internationally, and I have no social media usage or presence.
There almost ought to be training in schools on responsible use of the Internet, where topics such as these are covered.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=uae+son...
https://gulfnews.com/uae/sonapur-welcome-to-the-dark-side-1....
You go to prison for this in Dubai.
> have their password taken away
I suppose you mean “passport”. This is also illegal, government has been cracking down on this for years. The MOHRE hotline for these issues is advertised everywhere, it only takes a quick call and the police will come recover your passport.
But yeah, I guess it’s pointless to try and have a conversation with someone engaging as dishonestly as you.
I obviously don’t mean that violence or rape are okay, and it’s really shitty of you to suggest that. What next? Will you accuse me of molesting children too?
Many people crying about "slavery in Dubai" don't fully understand what slavery is and how Dubai works. What I am suggesting here, is that, perhaps, this notion is just a second-hand opinion you should consider changing your mind about. If you are open to it, that is.
UAE is doing more to improve the lives of these people than the West ever has, even if it doesn’t look all that pretty. It’s very unfortunate that photos of denied visa applications will never evoke the same response.
It is illegal to do this, enforcement is pretty aggressive.
As to denial of visas? At least the UAE offers these people a chance at a better life, Western countries give them nothing. A slight QOL improvement is much better than none.
To get a low-skilled work visa in Dubai you have to sit through an hour long lecture explaining these rights, including what to do if your employer takes your passport.
You are advised to not give your passport to your employer except to have your visa stamped, and then immediately demand it back.
This country is modernizing very rapidly, things that were true 5 years ago are often not true anymore.
I'm drawing the line at the confiscated passports, threat of jail and terrible living conditions - if you can't safely leave your work, you're a slave. It doesn't matter what the alternative at your home is.
But what do I know? Maybe because I’m in America I can’t call being forced to work and unable to leave slavery cause it’s a second hand opinion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No one confiscates passports, it is a nonsense. But what can I tell a person in America to make them doubt ideas they fixate to? Now go ahead and google up that one case when somebody did confiscate a passport a few decades ago and extrapolate this to all the millions of workers in UAE. You see what I mean?
Confiscate is probably too extreme a word, but when I lived in UAE many employers held onto (e.g. in the office safe) their employees passports. At some point I think the government realized this could be abused, and then there was an centralized office (at least in Jebel Ali, it was different in Abu Dhabi) where your employer asked you to have them hold your passport. To get your passport you had to get a letter from your employer saying it was okay for you to get it. Or, in my case, I left my job and got it back.
Personally, I hated the fact that I had to ask my employer for my passport when I got accepted into Grad school in the US and had to tell my employer I needed it for a few days to get a visa. I never questioned the legality of it though, and according to this it's not legal for employers to force you to hand over your passport.
https://gulfnews.com/uae/find-out-if-your-employer-is-author...
But like most legal things, when you are on a work visa you are scared of anything that might harm that. So you don't challenge or ask questions. It's pretty common for people on H1B to stay at an job they hate even though changing jobs on H1B is supposed to be easy. I certainly stayed at a bad job longer than I wanted to until my green card process hit a certain point. I think legally I could have changed earlier, but the company immigration attorney certainly gaslighted me on many things, and I was just too scared to take any risks with visa stuff. It's easy for a company to exploit that fear.
Admittedly this was 20 years ago and the government was taking steps to prevent it so I could believe the practice has mostly disappeared if given proof, but since we all know illegal behavior continues for a while after laws are enacted and enforced I’d still need to see that proof.
You’re argument about this not being real sounds a lot like when my countrymen claim our legal system doesn’t enslave people despite it being explicitly carved out in the constitution to allow it and prisoners being forced to work. It’s uncomfortable to face the truths but just claiming it’s the same in the face of evidence doesn’t help
Somebody with an agenda told you "Dubai slavery" long time ago and it is now easier for you to follow the narrative formed in your head. I get it, but the reality is different.
I keep finding facts that support this view because the facts are still there. Why are you acting like this isn’t real at all? I even asked for some evidence that this is no longer occurring which I could believe given the UAE government has taken steps to combat it, but you just want to call people flat earthers.
At this point the only one who seems to have an agenda is you and your attempts to shut down any conversation around the topic
However, it is also true that too many of those migrant workers are then treated atrociously, with little legal recourse, and with a casual chauvinism and racism that far exceeds what is often labeled "racism" in progressive societies.
And that is particularly grating given that those oil-rich countries could afford not only fancy buildings and museums, but also decent labour standards.
> Should Indian and Pakistani companies pay more to Indian and Pakistani workers they bring to Dubai?
Yes indeed.
> Who do you think should dictate how much more Indian companies should pay [...]?
As usual, the government of the country they operate in. In this case, the UAE governments. It would probably mean somewhat more expensive buildings for the UAE, and somewhat less profits for said Indian and Pakistani companies.
What should change in this scenario so you would stop calling this a "slavery"?
Many people who have enough leisure time to spend on HN and Reddit just don't understand the conditions many people grow up in. Not just India and Pakistan, but Philippines, Indonesia, and all the countries where you see economic migrants to any gulf country. Imagine growing up in unbelievable poverty with no educational opportunities or support, and with the external and internal pressure to financially support your siblings, parents, family and so they can survive and not just repeat the cycle you were born into.
It's an insane situation, and the only solution humans seem to have come up with is to encourage people with money buy stuff that's made by people who cannot afford that same stuff. In one country it's tall buildings, in another it's phones and t-shirts.
Global wealth inequality issues are certainly not easy to solve, but we don't just need to shrug and say "I guess that's the way the world needs to work" - there is an extreme amount of excess in western countries, we've got several people who have literally nothing better to do with their money than launch private rockets into space for PR so I don't think it's fair to say "it's near- slavery or t-shirts".
As the wealthiest nation on earth and the never-sated consumer that drives most of the world's economy America is in a position where it can demand better working conditions, it can say t-shirts at walmart can't reasonably cost 5$... but it is choosing not to do so. And, with all that said, the UAE in it's (hopefully now in the past) passport seizing days was still far worse.
Honestly, when I lived in UAE I had to submit my passport to a centralized system that held the passports of people who worked in that commercial area. To this day I don't know if I had to legally give them my passport or if my employer simply encouraged me to do it and presented it to me as as if I didn't have a choice.
A few weeks ago I had to take a sick family member to the emergency room here in the US at 3AM because they vomited blood. All medical resources online said it could not wait till morning as it could be internal bleeding. They were given an X-ray, an external exam by a nurse and a doctor, and told that it was a mild adverse reaction to some common medication and to swap to something else. Nothing to worry about. Time from leaving home to back home was 75 minutes, tops. Bill was $3500. My employer only offers HDHP options so a lot of that is on me once the insurance company and hospital are done playing their stupid games.
I think all employers in UAE are required to provide health-insurance. Prior to that, everybody there legally had governmental healthcare, but that has changed as medical costs have risen private insurance has become an option.
Thankfully I have insurance and I work in tech. It hits my budget and stings, I can afford to pay it. But if I didn't have health insurance and had family in my home country who depended on me sending money every month, that bill would have wrecked my life.
I realize passports versus medical benefits is not a sensible comparison at all.
Nobody seems to write stories about how governmental treatment of migrant workers in UAE has improved a lot over the last 2 decades. There's tons of room to improve, but it has gotten better.
These countries have been modernizing so fast that it’s really pointless to talk about how things were a couple of years ago.
2 years ago if someone said that this would happen people would probably have laughed at you https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/courts/2021/11/28/uaes-n...
I reject the premise that we live in a world of unregulated capitalism where free-markets force us all to engage in a race to the bottom when it comes to working conditions, and the modern world also rejects that with a plethora of examples: how can US workers who demand trivial things like sane working hours and health care possibly compete with people overseas who can do the same work while being paid peanuts - it's because we as a society can demand that. The people of the UAE could similarly demand that labourers be paid better and receive better treatment - it's not an unavoidable economic outcome that near slavery exists, it's a choice.
How would you justify this? And what if I ask you to apply the same logic to H1B?
the use of sports and FIFA is an example of this.
*qatar not uae, is the absolute worst place to hold a giant soccer tournament. They have to use special AC units inside giant stadiums (built on deaths of lots of migrant workers) because it's a hot desert. But they claim they are still 'green'
Saudi using art is an example too. They paid a ton of money to use the name Louvre even though their museum has nothing to do with the institution. ironically he refused to loan his $450 million 'da vinci' to the real museum. Evidently sitting on a yacht hidden because good chance it's not by da vinci's hand.
As a queer person who loves to travel (or did before covid) there are some countries i just refuse to visit, despite the awesome cultural heritage. I know that citizens don't always necessarily agree, but many do. And I just can't support the expansion of authoritarianism - and potentially risk my life.
Ummm, Qatar isn't UAE...
It wasn't filmed there. It was filmed in Morocco and they just said it took place in Abu Dhabi. The UAE government said they couldn't film there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_the_City_2#Filming
It might seem like a random topic for me to know, but I lived in UAE for a portion of my life and the government is pretty mindful of having their name associated with some of the themes you'd typically see with that particular TV series. So I was quite surprised when they claimed it was Abu Dhabi, and not surprised that they actually filmed it elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_films_shot_in_...
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2475463?hl=en
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7402099
Of course, the torture victim and his brother who released the video were convicted by UAE courts.
Taleb has been hyping this story for weeks.
The fact it gets so much media coverage suggests its rarity. The odds of being detained in uae for social media posts is very low. The UAE gets tons of tourism. Your odds of being roughed up by police in America are higher.
You'll need to be conscious of how you walk with your partner, you'll need to carefully consider how it'll look if you go out for a fancy dinner together and invent a cover story to cloak your actions, you'll probably be charged a gay-tax by being forced to rent separate hotel rooms or at least a room with double beds in it.
I find the description of "just keep it in your pants" to be offensively reductive.
Not saying I agree with anyone getting arrested for silly nonsense. But for 99% of the travelers, it doesn't matter.
I'm gonna be honest how can anyone actually think tweeting that is a good idea.
You'd have your visa revoked and be deported in a heartbeat, but you would not be charged or disappeared.
The fact is countries detain people all the time for a variety of reasons. I am not saying it's right, it just is.
In general it's a bad plan to put yourself in the hands of your opponents, especially if they are not very big on human rights and the rule of law.
Hostage diplomacy is very much a thing[1]. In general though I would think for most westerners it would be rather safe to visit the UAE, I think it's fairly aligned to the west and unlikely to detain people just to make a fuss.
[1] https://tnsr.org/2021/11/caught-between-giants-hostage-diplo...
There is a difference in scale and directness to this in UAE though.
I'm by no means apologizing for unethical and illegal extraordinary renditions, which were unacceptable, but that is a ridiculous claim.
Just an example:
>Thousands of people are convicted every year for “contempt of public officials”, a vaguely defined criminal offence that law enforcement and judicial authorities have applied in massive numbers to silence peaceful dissent.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/11/france-is-not...
> “The talk about this tweet is fake news,” a source close to the gynecologist and an MP of the Free Patriotic Movement, to which Kharrat is allegedly close, told L’Orient-Le Jour on condition of anonymity.
> He claimed that this tweet appeared after Kharrat’s arrest, saying that it was not published on the doctor’s personal account, but on that of an UAE national
It appears that the original tweet was faked.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2021/03/23/cri...
Just because a culture or people are not perfect doesn't justify their oppression.
I think most would agree this is 'being gay'. The most important part, for some. So yeah I think it's fair to say GP would be arrested unless s/he actively hides who s/he is, which is a gay person.
There are lots of cases of guys being thrown in jail and being fined for something as simple as long hair or wearing earrings. Not sex. Not "spreading ideology". I'm not just gay, my facebook page also has a picture of me and my partner, and my relationship status, "married," is public. And I'm locked out of facebook forever, so I can't even update any of that.
Given the experience of my friend and of dozens of cases that I've read about, no, people don't just get jailed for sex or speech. It goes way beyond that.
It’s kind of meaningless to worry about things that used to happen years ago in a country that’s modernizing so fast.
> There are lots of cases of guys being thrown in jail and being fined for something as simple as long hair or wearing earrings
Even straight up crossdressing in public hasn’t been illegal since Nov 2020.
Was your friend perhaps a local? The rules are unfortunately different depending on where you come from.
does not square with
> It’s kind of meaningless to worry about things that used to happen years ago in a country that’s modernizing so fast.
Not needing to worry about this is a privilege that I wouldn't enjoy. Glad to hear this isn't a problem on your Instagram, but that's damned thin evidence for me to risk my life for.
What exactly would be sufficient evidence?
You know, after such a long (and recent!) history of violent and targeted oppression, that's a really tough question. Do you understand that? To start with, maybe another 5 years without any shit like what happened to my friend before I'd even consider it? So, there isn't precisely a threshold on "sufficient evidence" -- I'd be looking for a complete lack of evidence.
Luxury hotels can afford to bribe cops and judges. The organization is safe (as in, the organization won't get in trouble). But, I don't particularly care for gay clubs. What happens if I stray outside of an unmarked tourist zone, maybe pop over to a random market and a cop doesn't like the look of me? Moreover, what if a random citizen doesn't like the look of me? Sadly, a few of my friends (not Instagram friends, actual people that I see IRL) have been physically assaulted for being gay or trans in Canada for fuck's sake, rural and urban; one is paralyzed below the neck because he got stabbed for being gay. Safety isn't just about laws, it's also about policing (which doesn't always follow the law, and good luck challenging anything as a non-citizen), it's also about culture.
But now you've got me curious. Why are you so invested in convincing me that it's A-okay to visit a place that is notorious for its mistreatment of a specific population that I belong to? I'm not about to try to convince some Sikhs that rural USA is safe, right?
I think your five years sounds about right, if I were in that position I might add another five or just simply never spend a minute longer in a place like that than I had to.
The people who I follow on Instagram that are openly gay on their profiles are also real people I have met many times in the UAE. These aren’t instagram friends, their profiles were just relevant in response to you bringing up social media profiles.
UAE is probably one of the least likely places in the world where you might be assaulted for being gay or trans. The government cares about optics more than anything, and would come down hard on anyone doing something like that.
> What happens if I stray outside of an unmarked tourist zone, maybe pop over to a random market and a cop doesn't like the look of me?
Nothing, UAE cops are nothing like Western cops. They’re paid very well and would rather avoid creating unnecessary trouble in their lives.
If you’re white, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that you’d end up having a negative interaction with UAE law enforcement unless you go out of your way to make powerful enemies.
I’m not saying UAE is great, I’m not saying it’s not a terribly corrupt place that can turn incredibly nasty sometimes. I’m just saying it’s a perfectly safe place for gay westerners.
I am, but you're doing a fantastically bad job at selling this.
> simple as long hair
Depends on what this long hair is. Many bedouins have long hair for example, and it's perfectly fine.
> wearing earrings.
Earrings are for women. Effemination of men is not allowed.
> Not sex. Not "spreading ideology"
Those two examples can fall under spreading ideology (context dependent for the long hair obviously).
According to US state department there have been “ no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex conduct.” since at least 2015.
(Yes, the excuse is that Europe has a different definition of free speech but the UAE would probably say the same. And even then I don't see how the US would be uncivilized according to the european definition of free speech lol)
I agree though that the restrictions on supporting BDS in some parts of the US are completely absurd. And I always find it funny that conservatives turn a completely blind eye to those laws (especially since it's in Texas! Pretty ironic). Yet the same laws often also apply in europe, and they are usually a lot stricter so my original point stands.
>Hervieu pointed to a recent ruling by the Court of Cassation, France’s court of final appeal, which upheld the criminal convictions of 12 BDS activists who burst into a supermarket in 2009 wearing “Boycott Israel” shirts and handing out fliers that read, “Buying Israeli products means legitimising crimes in Gaza.”
>The legislation means that what BDS activists regarded as political statements denouncing Israel’s violations of international law could be – and indeed were – treated by French courts as an "incitement" to hatred.
https://www.france24.com/en/20160120-france-boycott-israel-b...
Do you mean that the U.S. treats Palestinian activists poorly for visa purposes?
The US' "free" speech mantra has become a running gag with the post-9/11 developments already. I is peaking right now with all the evangelically influenced madness that is happening there.
If you openly support those kinds of groups, you absolutely SHOULD be stopped and interviewed/interrogated at the border. The 'humor' part has to be evaluated (e.g. if someone is always cracking weird jokes vs someone who suddenly pulls a Trumpian rant-one liner and tries to pass if off as ha-ha when it's really just the quiet part out loud).
>In 2013, a French mother was sentenced for “glorifying a crime” after she allowed her son, named Jihad, to go to school wearing a shirt that said “I am a bomb.”
Not exactly sure how this doctor got arrested but if they automatically scan feeds on arrival and then process them by strict adherence to law, that is bad.
Unfortunately, Lebanon is a complete basket case of a country. So many well educated Lebanese are forced to find work in Gulf countries with repressive regimes. They pay well to buy your silence.
It can even go beyond the ruling family. There was a US helicopter pilot (IIRC) who wrote something disparaging about his Qatari employer on Facebook while in the United States who was arrested upon his return to Qatar for it.
You have to be aware of the laws of whatever country you're going to and respect them. Ignore them at your own peril. You don't really get to complain it. Your choices are either to go and follow and law and not go. Ignorance is no excuse.
I'd actually be way more wary of taking a job in some of these countries. To leave Qatar, for eample, you need an exit visa. Basically, your employer has to consent. This system is ripe for abuse and has been abused many times. Employers use it to withhold wages in exchange for giving their permission. Personally, I would never work in such a place.
- A woman had a glass of wine while flying to UAE on UAE own airline!!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/11/woman-arrest...
- A guy accidentally touches the hip of another guy in a club
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/22/briton-jailed-...
- A non-married couple kissing in a restaurant
https://abcnews.go.com/International/TheLaw/kissing-couple-f...
And on and on and on.
Typically, if you are the citizen of a powerful country (US, UK, EU, ...) they will let you off with a fine.
If you are the citizen of a less powerful country, like this Lebanon doctor, you go to jail.
#2: Sounds like at least one of them was pretty drunk. Men regularly walk hand in had in arab societies, even only holding the pinky! Given that its the same source as #1, I wont hold my breath.
#3 "a simple peck on the cheek" are you kidding me? ever been to Dubai?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_of_Matthew_Hedges
Western governments are as craven in appeasing the UAE and Saudi kleptocracies, because of their wealth, as poor countries like India or Pakistan that hire themselves as mercenaries for the emirs dirty work (like kidnapping princess Latina of Dubai). Calling them medieval would be a grave insult to the Dark Ages.
Is the tweet in question. It is worth noting that we’re not sure yet that the tweet is true.
But lets assume it is:
Do people really think that this tweet should be enough to detain/arrest him? People in the US and in Lebanon (most of the world too) make countless of posts vilifying and wishing politicians dead.
The guy is a Christian doctor from Lebanon visiting for tourism/work. He has no impact or connections on houthis.
I also promise there’s countless of Lebanese people with similar or worse tweets visiting UAE.
Putting my conspiracy hat on:
Elections are coming up in Lebanon, arresting this doctor will make major news in Lebanon.
This will illicit two types of reaction there, people will be cheering this person’s arrest or will be cheering for a more hardline stance and distancing against UAE.
There are parties that claim to have good connections to UAE royalty (more like serfs) who will use this to say that this wouldn’t happen under their rule.
Is the UAE a dictatorship? Absolutely - the newspaper is censored, and publicly challenging or speaking ill of the government is a Bad Idea that everyone knows not to do.
Is it the autocratic dystopia that the article makes it out to be? Also no; I didn't have any problems during my time there, nor did any friends that I know of (including three gay friends). The UAE is basically caught between both traditional Muslim and Western democratic influences, and it's not strictly one or the other. As long as you're not challenging the government or doing anything Muslims would consider bad taste (e.g. public PDA), you're generally left alone.
Which meant I was surprised to learn about the jailing on account of a joke about the name "Nahyan", until I saw, "Another joke Dr. Kharrat tweeted urged the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to attack Dubai’s Burj Khalifa".
Iran and the UAE _really_ don't like each other, and the UAE maintains a strong security state at least in part because of it. Urging a Houthi attack on the Burj Khalifa would be taken very seriously, and I'd surmise 1) he ended up on a watchlist when he first made it and 2) the UAE is now using him as political pressure on Lebanon.
To be clear, I'm not at all condoning the UAE's actions here as they don't align with my personal values. That said, I'm not surprised: the UAE takes perceived threats to the state very seriously and doesn't claim to allow free speech, so Kharrat was doing a (from an Emirati perspective) Very Bad Thing that most visitors to the UAE aren't likely to.
They have been running a lot of PR campaigns about how modern they are.