Dubai – the Shiny Apple with a Rotten Core
All that glitters is not gold
Have you ever been to Dubai? Ever worked there as a professional for a few years, making a lot of tax free money to set yourself up when you get back home? Ever treated yourself to a luxury holiday where, for two weeks, you can pretend you are one of the elite, the super rich, the shoppers with their ostentatious branded carrier bags? Dubai: the City of Gold. The city of promise. The city of paid influencers. The city of the rich and the famous. The city built and serviced on slavery and indentured servitude.
Because make no mistake: if you answered yes to any of the questions above, congratulations. You contributed to keeping the Kafala Sponsorship System going, trapping migrant workers in exploitative, slum like living conditions. And if you did not know that, then shame on you. It is no secret. Many reports indicate that migrant workers have their passports withheld, face extremely low pay, and work and live in poor, overcrowded conditions, all propping up your tax dodging or luxury holiday. Sure, this is not the Dubai they want you to see. This is not the shiny skin of the Dubai apple. But it is the rotten core of it.
And as everyone knows, no matter how hard you shine an apple, no matter how lovely it appears in an Instagram shot, if the core is rotten you cannot enjoy its sweetness or save it, and sooner or later it will all rot to hell.
Underneath all the glamour, Dubai has always been a sketchy place where saying or doing the wrong thing, or even unintentionally offending someone, can get you a prison sentence.
But lately it has excelled itself in how it cracks down on those who do not conform.
There are many accounts online warning people about Dubai and the UAE in general. Let me tell you some of the warnings and stories I have come across. You need to heed them if you value your freedom.
Never go to the UAE. Did you know they will arrest you for what you might have shared on social media even from your home country?
Anyone who violates the UAE’s extraterritorial cybercrime laws from outside the UAE can be prosecuted upon arrival and sentenced to up to five years. They have done it before and will do it again.
So let us play that out in practice. Say you are working in Dubai and your family at home texts you to ask if you are safe. You reply that you do not feel very safe and send them an image or two to show why. You are heading to jail for a couple of years.
Right now, approximately 170 foreigners are in jail for this reason. All ages, all genders. They are not allowed lawyers. They are not allowed to contact their families. They are fed rice twice a day. They are allowed to shower twice a week. Dubai has rejected every request from these people’s governments.
Here is another story I came across. A Canadian man who had been a professor in the UAE for five years cleared everything financially before he left. He had broken no laws, but the university owed him money, so he went to the Labour and Civil Court to claim it. The courts ruled in his favour.
Two years later he was going through Dubai airport and was arrested, shackled, and sent to prison for four years. He had been tried in absentia without ever knowing he had even been charged. It turned out that MbZ was embarrassed about his court victory against the university and charged him with blasphemy. He had to buy his way out of jail.
While he was in prison he saw many women and babies. If you give birth out of wedlock, which often happens because of rape, you and the baby go to jail. He says his embassy did nothing. He told his story when he got home and it made front page news, and then the Emiratis scrubbed the internet.
So you have been warned.
If there is anything left of Dubai and the UAE after this, steer well clear.
Nobody will cry for Dubai.
Dubai: family owned petrol station without human rights. Billionaires will leave once the oil spigot is turned off.