Human Rights Watch report on the human rights abuses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Human Rights Watch report documents how the United Arab Emirates (UAE) continues to arbitrary detain individuals as a threat to its national security and sends its security forces to arrest and torture detainees in pre-trial detention.

This report highlights the torture and abuse of those detainees who are representing a group of 94 human rights defenders and activists on trial in 2013, known collectively as the UAE 94, most of whom were arrested in 2012. 

According to observation reports, the UAE 94 trial was deeply flawed. The detainees endured arbitrary detention and torture in pre-trial while simply exercising their rights to freedom of expression or their right to simply have an opinion and defend human rights. Since then they have been held incommunicado with no access to a lawyer or to their family. 

Furthermore, it portrays how migrant domestic workers, represent more than 88.5% of the UAE residents, are being trapped, exploited and abused in forced labour situations without any minimal protection right by UAE labour law which has failed to adequately protect female domestic workers from abuse by employers and recruiters. It also shows that workers are subject to destitution, arrest and deportation if they complain about unsafe or poor labour conditions.

Despite the working groups between Human Rights Watch and UAE, more contentious topics such as freedom of expression and torture are not on the agenda.

* Published on January 2015 by Human Rights Watch

To get a copy of the report, click on PDF File: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/unitedarabemirates.pdf