SANID Campaign (Stand up for UAE detainees) launched on Monday (1st May 2023) a petition calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all those detained solely for the exercise of their human rights and an end to all abuse and harassment of detained critics, human rights defenders, political opposition members, and their families.

The petition was signed by more than 40 regional and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Centre (EDAC), the Gulf Center for Human Rights, the World Organisation Against Torture, and MENA for Human Rights.

For more than 10 years, UAE authorities have been unjustly detaining at least 60 Emirati human rights defenders, civil society activists, and political dissidents who were arrested in 2012 because of their demands for reform and democracy or their affiliation with the Reform and Social Guidance Association (al-Islah), the petition reads.

“Some from this group, commonly known as the “UAE 94” because of the number of defendants in their mass trial, were subjected to enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment. They were sentenced to between 7 and 15 years in prison during a trial in 2013 that failed to meet minimum fair trial standards.”

As the UAE will host the 28th United Nations global climate talks (COP28) from 30 November to 12 December 2023, the petition expressed deep concern over the human rights situation in the country, particularly the severe restrictions imposed by the authorities on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, which seriously undermine the work of civil society and the space for political dissent in the country. 

“More than three-quarters of these prisoners have completed their sentences yet remain in arbitrary detention to date. UAE authorities refuse to release them, alleging that they continue to pose a “terrorist threat,” based on vague laws that allow their indefinite detention, in flagrant violation of international human rights law.”

The petition further called on UAE authorities to amend all repressive laws that violate human rights, including the Anti-Terrorism Law, the Penal Code, and the Cybercrime Law, and bring them into line with international human rights standards, and to end all restrictions on civil society organisations, and allow the establishment of entirely independent civil society institutions.