On August 9, 2019, the Association for Victims of Torture in the UAE held a campaign in Geneva to raise public awareness about the mass human rights violations in the United Arab Emirates. The campaign focused mainly focusing on the widespread practice of torture and denounced
Founded in 2018 by survivors of torture in the UAE, the AVTUAE aims at supporting victims of torture in the United Arab Emirates, denouncing this widespread practice and fighting impunity. Through this campaign, the AVTUAE intended to inform public opinion and shed light on the systematic practice of torture in the UAE.
This campaign aimed at drawing the attention of the public opinion to the reality behind the modern and luxurious towers of the United Arab Emirates. AVTUAE’s volunteers distributed flyers to passers-by to bring to their attention the situation of human rights and the systematic practice of torture in the UAE.
Torture has been an ongoing practice for years and, to this day, torture survivors are still struggling to overcome the physical and psychological trauma caused by torture in Emirati jails. To be able to move forward, it is crucial for victims to obtain justice and reparation, which the Emirati authorities are refusing to grant them. In fact, despite the increasing number of torture allegations, the UAE has continuously refused to recognise the alleged violations and open independent investigations into these claims.
Rights organisations have reported dozens of cases of torture, especially since the violent crackdown carried out by the government on the main opposition group in 2012. Dozens of activists were unlawfully arrested, detained incommunicado for months, and tortured before their first appearance in court. Most of them were sentenced to up to 15 years imprisonment for unfounded and vague charges such as “attempting to overthrow the government and undermining the image of the State”.
The victims reported having been tortured and brought before a judge or a prosecutor with visible marks of torture. None of these cases has been investigated, and all the victims have been jailed on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Among these victims are the defendants of the UAE 94 trial and dozens of other victims.
The list of the victims is not limited to just political and human rights activists. Allegations of torture of foreigners and expatriates without any political or social activities have become frequent over the past years. David Haigh and Khaled Ahmed, two of the founding members of the
In its campaign, the AVTUAE also outlined the systematic practice of enforced disappearance and torture in UAE-run detention facilities in Yemen. Since the beginning of the war in Yemen, in which the UAE is a major actor, dozens of cases of suspicious deaths in Emirati jails have been reported. The Emirati forces and UAE-trained militias have also executed civilians and committed serious war crimes.
Despite these systematic violations of human rights and humanitarian law, it is concerning to note, that western democracies are not taking a clear stand to condemn these acts, and put pressure on the Emirati government to immediately stop such violations. In fact, many of them are still providing the UAE with weapons, used by allied militias to commit war crimes. This is why the association decided to focus on public opinion. For instance, the flyer urged the population to support NGOs work and suggested small steps to be taken to impact, in the long term, the situation of victims of human rights violations in the UAE.
For more information, please contact us at info@avtuae.org.
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