Lack of freedom and justice in the UAE

The world celebrated the International Day of Justice this July, while there are facts and evidence that show that justice has been violated in the UAE. Abu Dhabi and its policies for gross violations of justice must be condemned.

The International Day of Justice coincides with the tenth anniversary of the arrest of dozens of Emiratis political and human rights activists by the UAE government who demanded reforms and freedoms in the country and became known as " UAE-94".

Over the past years, the UAE has witnessed numerous and varied forms of targeted attacks on justice and freedom in offensive ways.

Freedom is one of the fundamental rights without which justice cannot be achieved, and comprehensive social justice will never be achieved by depriving citizens of their freedom, even if there is a society in absolute welfare.

Also, equality is one of the supplementary concepts of justice, here equality exists in a society that is guaranteed by the government. This means that the government guarantees the distribution of economic, political and cultural rights equally among all members and social groups, without discriminating between individuals or groups due to specific political tendencies or ideology.

Therefore, one of the signs of the existence of justice in a society is the participation of different members of the society in building the future and reducing the differences between social classes, which decreases with the lack of freedom – the thing that is happening in the UAE. The government here, allocates power and wealth to a certain social class of citizens and deprives the rest of the classes.

Justice and freedom are human values ​​that governments must implement in society. Religion has also guaranteed these two values ​​for humans, and they are natural values ​​that are hidden in the nature of humans, and religions came to establish and strengthen them.

But in the UAE, not only is justice and freedom openly violated, but this violation is carried out in the most offensive way possible, to the extent that the human rights activists are exposed to the most brutal and inhuman repressions.

The most obvious example of an attack on these two values ​​is the adoption of a series of arbitrary laws by the UAE government, including the new law on cybercrimes, which was approved in 2021 and came into force last January.

Under this law, the UAE government imposes severe censorship on mass media and the press in general and arrests many activists for their activities in cyberspace.

Over the past fifty years, many field realities have been established in the UAE, one of which is the disruption in the population structure and during the past two decades, it has also increased drastically. The most important consequence of this is the loss of the Emirati national identity and the influence of foreign cultures instead of the authentic and traditional culture of this country, which is not in line with the native residents of the UAE.

In 1975, 35% of the population of the UAE compromised of native people, while this ratio decreased to 9.7% in 2020. During this period, the population of non-natives or foreigners living in the UAE doubled, and this increase led to the fundamental changes in the population structure of this country. And since the government is not looking for a solution to this problem, this problem will undoubtedly intensify in the coming years.

Another fact that should be noted in this country is that despite the rapid and powerful economic growth and urban development of the UAE, there is no development and progress in the "political structure" and public participation in this country.

While it was expected that along with the economic growth and population increase (from 196,000 people in 1975 to about 1,000,000 people in 2020), more transparent, reliable and modern methods and ways of people's political participation should be implemented in the UAE, but none of these policies were implemented.

For this reason, the UAE is still deprived of a legislative body elected by Emirati citizens and undisputed transfer of power. In addition, the initiative of the rulers of this country to normalize relations with Israel without taking into the consideration the opinions and views of the rulers and other emirates that make up the Emirates was met with many protests inside this country. This was apart from the widespread opposition of the Emirati public opinion to this action, as a survey by the Washington Center for Middle East Studies showed that 80 percent of Emiratis were against their government's move to establish relations with Israel.

According to experts, all these policies show the lack of freedom and justice in a country like the UAE.