Christopher Davidson - After the Sheikhs - The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

Evidence of sectarian tension in the UAE, where there is believed to be a Shia minority making up about 5 per cent of the total national population, is currently more anecdotal. As in Kuwait, most of the Emirati Shia tend to be well integrated, especially in Dubai where they are a major force in the emirate’s business community. In recent years, however, there has been a discernible shift in attitudes, with many Shia complaining of more limited employment opportunities and — on occasion — discrimination in the workplace. With the situation in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and with the rising tension between the UAE and Iran this is likely to get much worse in the near future. Already there are clear indications that the UAE authorities distrust Arab Shia expatriates in their country, including even those who have loyally worked in the UAE’s public sector for decades. In 2009, for example, the UAE reportedly began deporting dozens of long-term Lebanese Shia expatriates, seemingly on the grounds that they had financial or other connections to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Since then many other Lebanese and other Arab Shia have been deported from the UAE, usually with no notice. Interestingly, a committee has now been formed in Lebanon to combat this sectarian discrimination, and has provided details of many of the Lebanese deportees, including one man who had worked as a journalist in Sharjah for twenty-two years and another who had lived in the UAE for thirty-five years, owned three companies and had $5 million worth of contracts in the UAE, and employed more than eighty Arab Sunni expatriates in the country. The former claims that he had no warning and was not even allowed to pack his bags, while the latter explained that he was held at the airport after returning from a vacation and denied entry into the UAE for ‘security reasons’. Confirming the deportations, a senior Hezbollah representative has argued that the UAE has ‘violated their rights and freedom’ and has called on the UAE authorities to ‘save the hundreds of Lebanese families who have contributed to the development of your country’. [617] 156. Agence France Presse, 1 October 2009.

Best viewed as an early response to the accumulating internal pressures in the Gulf monarchies, coupled with a lack of transparency associated with prevailing political structures, there has been a dramatic increase in censorship in the region. For decades there have been crude attempts to black out articles in foreign newspapers, ban certain books, fire journalists, and harass academics who spoke out of line. But with the advent of new communications — especially involving mobile telephones and the internet — the governments’ responses have had to become far more sophisticated, often employing the latest technologies, methods, and new legal apparatus to cut off channels of free expression and remove or discredit those responsible. As the final chapter of this book demonstrates, this is becoming harder for governments to do, as media evolves and opponents manage to keep information and ideas flowing beyond governmental control.

Nevertheless, there have been notable examples of effective censorship in all of the Gulf monarchies in the past few years. This has not gone unnoticed, with all six states having slipped further down the World Press Freedom Index, as compiled by Reporters without Borders. As of early 2012, the highest ranked Gulf monarchy was Kuwait — in 78 thposition — with the UAE, Qatar, and Oman ranked firmly below dozens of African dictatorships — in 112 th, 114 th, and 117 thpositions respectively — and with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain ranking among the very worst countries in the world. [618] 157. Reporters without Borders January 2012. Citing the ‘World Press Freedom Index 2012’. Although superficially successful in the short term in limiting opposition voices, the various censorship strategies employed have been leading to heightened fears and widespread criticism and condemnation of the regimes responsible, not only from the international community, but also from resident national and expatriate populations. In a summer 2011 YouGov poll commissioned by the BBC’s Doha Debates, which collected the responses of 1000 participants from the region, it was revealed that more than half of the Gulf respondents were ‘too afraid to speak out against their rulers’. This contrasted sharply with a similar poll amongst nationals of North African Arab Spring states, where respondents reportedly expressed optimism about their freedoms. [619] 158. Doha Debates press release, 25 June 2011.

Bahrain unsurprisingly provides some of the most extreme examples of censorship and attacks on free speech, with a large number of recent assaults and arrests involving opinion-makers and commentators. In August 2010, for example, it was reported by the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights that the editor in chief of Bahrain’s Alwatan newspaper [620] 159. Muhannad Abu Zeitoun. was attacked by several masked men outside the newspaper’s headquarters in the early hours of the morning. He claimed that they asked him if he worked for the newspaper, to which he said ‘yes’, and then they began to beat him and set fire to his car. [621] 160. Bahrain Center for Human Rights press release, 27 August 2010. Although Alwatan is believed to be funded by a member of the ruling family, has close links to the regime, and has been accused of promoting sectarianism in Bahrain, its pro-government stance is thought to have wavered in recent years. The following month another disturbing incident happened when the founder of Bahrain’s most popular internet forum [622] 161. Ali Abdulemam. —Bahrainonline.org — was arrested by security services and his website blocked on the grounds that it was ‘spreading false news’. Thought to be one of more than 200 bloggers and internet activists seized that summer, he was increasingly seen as a threat to the government as his forum allowed opposition voices to discuss matters freely with other Bahrainis. Visited by thousands every day, the forum was particularly well known for having helped break news of the Bandargate scandal, along with ‘highlighting cases of sectarian discrimination, police brutality, state corruption, and political naturalisation’. According to one user, the forum was so active that ‘…if [she] heard a bang at night [she] would be able check on the internet [forum] and, sure enough, someone would have posted about it within minutes. Some users even posted photos of government security agents who show up at protests, prompting the agents to start covering their faces when appearing in public’. Hundreds of other websites have since been blocked, with all surviving websites in Bahrain now having to register their details with the Ministry for Information. Even Google Earth has been blocked, after activists began using satellite images from the software to demonstrate how vast and lavish the ruling family’s palaces were in comparison to the poor suburbs that most Bahrainis have to live in. [623] 162. Foreign Policy , 21 October 2010.

Other incidents in 2010 included the fining of journalists who had attempted to report on money-laundering scandals involving ministers, despite their cases having shifted from the mandate of the prosecution to the law courts and thus no longer being subjected to gag orders. [624] 163. Gulf News , 29 December 2010. That year was notable also for a statement from the Ministry for information that BlackBerry mobile devices were no longer to be used for ‘circulating any form of news’. This was a government reaction, much like that to the internet fora, based on a growing concern that BlackBerrys were being used by Bahrainis to pass on information about government corruption and abuses. The statement went on to explain that: ‘…mobile phones have been relaying news of incidents and topics in Bahrain. In view of the impact of such news in causing disarray and confusion to the public… those individuals and agencies were summoned by the Ministry, and legal and judicial procedures will be filed against violators of laws…’ Although it is unclear how successful the ministry has been in controlling the use of BlackBerrys, it seems that the Blackberry World application feature has been blocked in Bahrain, thus preventing the installation of messenger and discussion applications.