Cognitive dissonance – the mental discomfort that results from a person performing an action that contradicts their ideals – seems to be reaching epidemic proportions at the moment. Whether it’s pro-EU politicians voting through Brexit bills or eco-conscious holidaymakers taking climate-wrecking long-haul flights, many of us seem to be behaving in ways that conflict with our deeply-held principles.
The already dire state of freedom of expression in the UAE took a further nosedive nine days after the close of last year’s festival when Ahmed Mansoor, a courageous critic of Sheik Mohammed’s government described by Amnesty as "the last remaining Emirati human rights defender speaking out about human rights violations in the country,” was arrested during a midnight raid on his family home. Mansoor has since been held in an unknown location. Amnesty have said that they are “appalled and dismayed” by Mansoor's arrest and expressed concerns that he may be at risk of torture.
Human rights organisations explain the vital role played by UAE human rights defender
Ahmed Mansoor in this 2015 video made before his arrest.
Ahmed Mansoor in this 2015 video made before his arrest.
Mansoor’s arrest was part of a further crackdown of freedom of expression in the three weeks following last year’s festival which also included the sentencing of Dr Nasser bin Ghaith to ten years in prison for the "crime" of criticising Sheik Mohammed’s government on Twitter. In a statement on Dr Nasser bin Ghaith’s sentencing, Amnesty’s Lynn Maalouf observed that “the authorities have left no room for doubt: those who dare to speak their minds freely in the UAE today risk grave punishment.”
Penguin's pledge to champion freedom of expression. |
Penguin’s website includes a corporate pledge to “champion freedom of expression” which it describes as “fundamental to our organisation” and several Penguin authors testify to how much “free speech matters” to them in the 2011 video below.
Prominent among them is Anthony Horowitz OBE, another of the big name UK authors making a return appearance at this year’s festival. Horowitz explains in the video that “freedom of speech is a fundamental human right,” and emphatically states that “censorship is sterile, it’s empty, it’s repressive!”. These fine sentiments are clearly not shared by the "loony" (Horrowitz's word for a censorious leader like Sheik Mohammed) who is footing the bill for Horrowitz's business class flights and luxury accommodation at the festival.
The politics of festival patron and sponsor Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum make Donald Trump's look liberal. |
A current bête noire of many western writers attending the festival is US president Donald Trump. Since Trump was elected in 2016, left-leaning writers have been falling over each other to condemn his bullying, bigoted brand of politics. I suspect few of these writers would be willing to lend their names to a Trump Industries Festival of Literature sponsored by the US leader, no matter how great the opportunity for dialogue and cultural exchange with US citizens. It’s a testament to the UAE state's adeptness at PR that so many left-wing authors, poets, journalists and broadcasters are unable or unwilling to apply the same ethical judgment to a festival sponsored by Sheik Mohammed, a politician so right wing, he makes Donald Trump look like a liberal. While Trump can at least claim to be a democratically elected leader who represents the people he governs, the Sheik is an autocratic dictator who brutally suppresses all calls for democratic reform. While Trump’s government bars critical journalists from their press conferences, the Sheik’s has them abducted, imprisoned and tortured. And while Trump is curbing the rights of LGBT citizens, the Sheik criminalises them and bans trans visitors from entering Dubai and the wider UAE.
One area where Trump is openly modelling his policies on those of Sheik Mohammed is workers’ rights. When Trump sang the praises of Dubai Airport in 2016’s presidential debates, he neglected to mention the inhumane labour practices that enabled Sheik Mohammed’s government to build such grandiose structures so quickly and for so little money. Trump has a first-hand knowledge of these practices, having exploited them himself to build the Trump International Golf Club in Dubai, and his administration’s current attack on worker’s rights is intended to bring US workers' rights closer to those of Dubai’s.
The UAE has set itself up as the gatekeeper of literature for the Gulf region. The Dubai-based Emirates Airline Festival is the biggest literature festival in the Arab world and the annual international book fair in the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah is also the largest in the region. Both the festival and the book fair are heavily reliant on high-profile UK authors to fill out their programmes.
This reliance on UK talent presents the UK literary community with a real opportunity to promote freedom of expression and respect for human rights within the Gulf. The UK literary community has far more leverage in the UAE than it does in most countries where freedom of expression is currently under attack, such as Turkey or Egypt.
Sheik Mohammed’s gang of autocratic leaders is not the only government that would prefer the festival's writers to keep quiet about their sponsors’ poor human rights record. The UK government is currently prioritising trade over human rights in the UAE and has announced plans to double bilateral trade between the two countries to £25bn in the next two years. Arms sales are especially lucrative; despite its size, the UAE is currently the world's fourth largest buyer of arms. The participation of eminent UK writers in UAE state-sponsored events like the festival help to cement relations between the UK and the UAE. And, of course, the chief reason that UK publishers with “a long and proud history of championing free speech” are prepared to endure such high levels of cognitive dissonance at events like the Emirates Airline Festival and Sharjah Book Fair is that there is a great deal of money to be made from book sales in the region as well.
The road ahead looks rocky. As the UK leaves the European Union, Great Britain PLC will be obliged to look further afield for lucrative trading partners and that inevitably means more cosying up with repressive states like the UAE. I fear we are going to have to endure a lot more Emirates-Festival-style cognitive dissonance as a consequence.
Further Information
Well said, Jonathan. I particularly like your point that if it was black workers being exploited people would be more uncomfortable about going. But I know so many otherwise liberal, intelligent people who go to the festival, or on holiday or for other non-family reasons.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anne. It's always nice to hear from a fellow author who does not think I am a party-pooping, sanctimonious killjoy! :)
DeleteJonathan, I don't think you're a party-pooping sanctimonious killjoy. I think you make an extremely important point. I hope that the tide is turning on this and that more people choose not to attend and to talk about why (I'm sure that many authors have turned it down for human rights reasons -and it would be great to hear from them). I do think that it's something we need to support each other on, and then we can encourage each other to turn down things that fly in the face of human rights. I still do things I'm not proud of (I use Amazon and actually listed all my excuses in this comment for why before deleting them) so I'm aware of being labelled a hypocrite for this. But I think it would be a very good thing if we could support each other in saying no -and vocally, to help others do it, too- to these kinds of events.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Clare. As I commented on Facebook, supportive public comments from fellow authors such as yourself mean a great deal to me.
DeleteI think if the festival had just started this year it would be a lot easier to get authors to speak out against its human rights abusing sponsors. The problem is that, after running for 10 years, the festival has accrued a ‘critical mass’ of respectability from all of the highly respectable UK authors that have come to be associated with it. New children’s authors invited to the festival look at who has appeared there in previous years and think “If six Children’s Laureates have agreed to go, it must be OK!”
Other high-profile authors who may be refusing to go for ethical reasons are reluctant to voice their concerns for fear of embarrassing/alienating their fellow authors who do accept. We approached several big-name authors who hadn’t gone to the festival in the run up to the Think Twice boycott campaign to ask if they would support the campaign publicly. Only Laurence Anholt agreed to do so (I already had a high opinion of Laurence - now I consider him to be a saint!). Most did not even reply. There are couple of big name authors who are very vocal on ethical issues who signed the cultural boycott of Israel, but declined to support our festival boycott campaign. While I think there are some sound arguments against boycotting the whole of Israel because of the actions of its government, I think the ethical case for boycotting a government-sponsored event like the Emirates Festival is far more clear cut.