Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC

Recently, Roscommon woman Tori Towey returned home to Ireland following a traumatic ordeal in Dubai.

As the Dáil heard, she had been the victim of domestic violence, but instead of being protected by the Dubai authorities she was treated as a criminal: charged with attempted suicide and alcohol consumption and had a travel ban imposed on her.

Tori’s return home was thanks to quick and effective efforts by many people who sprang into action, including her mother, Caroline and her family, as well as the advocacy group, Detained in Dubai. Politicians — particularly her local TD, Claire Kerrane, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and Taoiseach Simon Harris — as well as the Irish Ambassador and Embassy officials in the UAE were also crucial in release efforts.

Speaking at Dublin airport on her return, Tori also thanked the Irish media and the Irish people. “Without you guys, I wouldn’t be here,” she said. She was right. International attention shamed Dubai authorities into doing the right thing: dropping the charges, lifting the travel ban, and allowing her to return home to Ireland.

Spotlight on UAE

Tori’s case, rightly, dominated the headlines in Irish and international media in the days after. But now that she is home, we must ensure that the spotlight remains on UAE’s human rights abuses.

Tori’s case was shocking, but it was not a surprise. Behind the ultra-modern image of an influencer paradise, the seven-star hotels and designer shopping and the glitzy image presented to tourists is a grubby, dark reality.

Horrendous human rights abuses occur daily. On the very day when Tori’s case led the Irish headlines, Wednesday 10 July, scores of human rights activists were sentenced to life imprisonment in UAE in a mass trial which Amnesty International described as a “shameless parody of justice”.

In my 20 years working on human rights cases in UAE, I frequently see clients imprisoned on spurious grounds which have no proper basis: for liking human rights posts on social media, for bringing books into the country that the authorities disapprove of, for carrying essential prescription drugs, for refusing to sign police documents in Arabic without an interpreter, and even for being pregnant and not having proof of being married.

The Department of Foreign Affairs’ travel guidance does warn Irish people to be careful, saying that “it is important to respect local customs, laws, and religions while in the UAE. There can be serious penalties, including custodial sentences, for doing something that may not be illegal in Ireland.”

The DFA also gives specific warnings to pregnant women, which should horrify any woman considering travelling there: “If you become pregnant outside marriage, both you and your partner could face imprisonment and/or deportation… An unmarried woman who gives birth in the UAE may also encounter problems when registering the birth of the child in the UAE, and could face arrest, imprisonment or deportation. To obtain a birth certificate from the UAE authorities, you must provide a marriage certificate and the authorities may compare the date of the marriage against the estimated date of conception.”

Pregnancy may also be used as evidence of adultery. There are cases involving women being sentenced to death by stoning or floggings because they are pregnant and unmarried, and the pregnancy itself is proof of sex outside wedlock and thus of adultery.

Abysmal treatment of women

But UAE is dangerous for any woman, pregnant or not. There are multiple examples of women who are victims of crime being treated as criminals. In 2010, the Criminal Court of Abu Dhabi ruled that an 18-year-old woman who accused six men of gang-raping her would serve a one-year sentence for consensual sex. (The accused men, however, got off very lightly.)

A Norwegian woman who was raped on a business trip in 2013 was handed a 16-month prison sentence when she reported this to the police. She was convicted and sentenced on charges of having unlawful sex, making a false statement and illegal consumption of alcohol. She was pardoned by Dubai’s leader after an international outcry, but this should never have happened in the first place.

A British woman who was gang-raped in 2016 was arrested for having extra-marital sex when she reported the crime. She was later released after an international outcry, thanks to efforts by Detained in Dubai and other rights groups, but she should never have been arrested in the first place.

Women who are sexually assaulted have nowhere to turn. Some women have turned to the media to tell their stories, as no official mechanisms work for them. For example, in 2020 Londoner Caitlin McNamara, an employee of the Hay Literary Festival, spoke out, claiming that she had been attacked by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan — the Minister of Tolerance — when she met him to discuss preparations for the first-ever Hay Festival in Abu Dhabi. The festival has since been cancelled, but she has still had no accountability, either in the UAE or the UK — and Sheikh Nayhan remains in post.

LGBTQ+ rights

It is not only women victims of sexual violence who are criminalised and mistreated. Homosexuality is also illegal in Dubai (‘consensual sodomy’ is punishable by up to 10 years in prison). Men who are victims of sexual violence are often criminalised. In one high-profile case, a French teenage boy who was gang-raped at knifepoint, Alexandre Robert, was coaxed by police to ‘admit’ he was gay and that the incident was not in fact rape, but consensual, and so he had committed a crime.

It was only thanks to Alexandre’s bravery, the extensive efforts of his mother and international media coverage that the three rapists were eventually held to account and convicted.

UAE is also a clearing house for other abusive regimes. I am aware of multiple cases of human rights activists and other innocent people being kidnapped when in transit at Dubai Airport and transferred to prisons in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, China and Rwanda. Some of these cases have hit the headlines, such as when ‘Hotel Rwanda’ hero Paul Rusesabagina was kidnapped in Dubai and bundled into a private jet and taken to Rwanda.

Others have not.

I have two clients who were kidnapped in this way and remain in prison in autocratic countries where they have been tortured — and the Dubai authorities were willing assistants. And because of my work as a human rights lawyer, I have been advised that UAE is not a safe country for me to travel to.

Yet, while all this is happening in UAE, tourists and influencers turn a blind eye. They wear golden blindfolds as they pose for selfies and share breathless stories about designer shopping, luxurious hotels and tax-free living.

We owe it to Tori Towey and to all victims of human rights abuses to take off the golden blindfolds and see UAE for what it really is.

• Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC is an award-winning human rights lawyer and barrister. This article was first published by TheJournal.ie.