This article was originally published inThe Bookseller on 30 November 2018
Victims of UAE injustice: UK academic Matthew Hedges, with his wife Daniela, and UAE Human Rights Campaigner Ahmed Mansoor, with three of his children.
The UAE government’s pardoning of UK academic Matthew Hedges earlier this week was clearly a cause for celebration. Matthew’s release was the result of the courageous campaigning of his wife Daniela Tejada. After months of having her requests to meet with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt ignored, Daniela decided to disregard the Foreign Office’s advice and shared the story of her husband’s plight with the UK media. By doing so she secured the immediate attention of Jeremy Hunt along with the sympathy and support of the UK public. The UAE’s mistreatment of Matthew caused such outrage that the staff of three UK universities voted to boycott their UAE campuses and several UK authors booked to appear at next March’s state-sponsored Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai announced that they would boycott the festival if Matthew remained in prison.
"The academic and author boycotts of the UAE helped to send an emphatic signal to both governments that the UK public was not willing to turn a blind eye to such shocking mistreatment of a fellow citizen."
The UAE is currently the world's fourth-largest buyer of arms and one of the UK’s most lucrative trading partners. The UK government has a track record of prioritising trade over human rights in its dealings with the Gulf state and it seems likely that, if the UK public had been indifferent to Matthew’s predicament, he would still be languishing in an Abu Dhabi jail. The academic and author boycotts of the UAE helped to send an emphatic signal to both governments that the UK public was not willing to turn a blind eye to such shocking mistreatment of a fellow citizen.
One of the UAE’s notable prisoners of conscience is the engineer and blogger Ahmed Mansoor, formerly described by Amnesty as "the last remaining Emirati human rights defender”. After being released from eight months in prison in 2011 for the crime of “insulting officials”, the UAE government confiscated Ahmed’s passport, forcing him to remain in the country. Knowing full well that his actions would inevitably result in further imprisonment and torture, Ahmed continued to speak out against human rights violations in the UAE. In 2015 a jury of ten global human rights organisations, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, awarded him the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in recognition of his courageous work.
Human rights organisations explain the vital role played by UAE human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor in this 2015 video made before his return to prison.
In March 2017, Ahmed was re-arrested and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the “crime” of criticising the UAE government on social media. Unlike Daniela Tejada, Ahmed’s wife is unable to campaign for his release. The family and friends of UAE prisoners of conscience who challenge prisoners’ convictions are liable to become prisoners themselves and that would leave Ahmed’s four young children without a parent. If Ahmed and the many other UAE prisoners of conscience convicted purely for exercising their freedom of expression are to be pardoned, the pressure must come from outside of the UAE.
"If UK authors are prepared to boycott a festival over the unfair imprisonment of a single innocent UK citizen, then surely we should be prepared to do the same for the scores of innocent Emiratis like Ahmed Mansoor."
If UK authors are prepared to boycott a UAE state-sponsored festival over the unfair imprisonment of a single innocent UK citizen, then surely we should be prepared to do the same for the scores of innocent Emiratis like Ahmed Mansoor. If not, we’re effectively saying that the welfare and liberty of a UK citizen are worth far more than those of a foreigner imprisoned for defending the freedom of others.
I’d like to think that UK authors are better than that. Freedom of expression is the fundamental principle on which our craft depends; whether we boycott the festival or choose to attend it, UK authors should challenge those who are brutally suppressing freedom of expression within the UAE. So, as we celebrate Matthew Hedges’ release, we should also speak out to defend the rights of those who have no one else to defend them.
Some of the eminent writers currently appearing at this year’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
Top: Carol Ann Duffy DBE, Anthony Horowitz OBE, Eoin Colfer, Jacqueline Wilson DBE.
Bottom: Jenni Murray OBE, Lemn Sissay MBE, David Walliams OBE, Kate Adie OBE
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.
"While the festival presents itself as promoting freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas, its sponsors have gone to great lengths to ensure that this freedom does not extend beyond the festival’s glitzy bubble"
Among the potential sufferers in this epidemic are the many eminent UK writers currently appearing at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai. The festival's main sponsors are Emirates Airline and the Dubai Government (who are the airline’s sole owners) and the festival’s patron, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is both the ruler of Dubai and the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While the festival presents itself as promoting freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas, its sponsors have gone to great lengths to ensure that this freedom does not extend beyond the festival’s glitzy bubble and UAE residents wishing to remain at liberty must be extremely careful about which ideas they attempt to exchange. According to Amnesty International, more than a hundred peaceful critics of the Sheik’s government have been imprisoned since the festival was launched in 2009, most of whom remain in prison today.
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.
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.”
"The authorities have left no room for doubt: those who dare to speak their minds freely in the UAE today risk grave punishment." Amnesty International
Sheik Mohammed’s sociopathic obsession with suppressing freedom of speech among his subjects does not seem to have deterred many authors from accepting invitations to the lavish festival he sponsors. This year’s programme boasts an impressive roll call of writing talent, with current UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, former UK Children’s Laureate Dame Jacqueline Wilson and former Irish Children’s Laureate Eoin Colfer all making return appearances. UK journalists and broadcasters are also well represented by the Observer’s Associate Editor Robert McCrum and the BBC’s Jenni Murray OBE and Kate Adie OBE among others.
Penguin's pledge to champion freedom of expression.
I don’t know how many of the writers appearing at this year’s festival are members or supporters of organisations like English PEN, who campaign to defend writers around the world “whose human right to freedom of expression is at risk”, but this group must be among those at risk of enduring the most severe degree of cognitive dissonance. There must also be a staggeringly high risk of cognitive dissonance among the publishers listed among the festival’s secondary sponsors whose codes of conduct commit them to defending freedom of expression. These include Penguin, a “Silver Pen Partner” of English PEN, who claim to have “a long and proud history of championing free speech”.
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.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell
A potential hotspot of cognitive dissonance within the festival programme is the annual George Orwell Lecture, where invited luminaries give a talk inspired by the great writer. Last year's George Orwell Lecture was given by distinguished BBC broadcaster James Naughtie. This lecture series claims to celebrate the politics, philosophy and beliefs of the same George Orwell who wrote: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” I don’t know if Sheik Mohammed is an Orwell fan, but if he is, he seems to have misinterpreted Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s nightmarish vision of an oppressive surveillance state, as a guidebook on how to govern Dubai and the wider UAE. Human Rights Watch described the Sheik's government's introduction of censorious "cybercrime" laws in 2012 as having "effectively closed off the country’s only remaining forum for free speech". The UAE authorities have been widely criticized by human rights groups for deploying expensive surveillance software to spy on human rights activists. In 2016 the Sheik's government invested an unprecedented sum in an attempt to hack the iPhone of now-imprisoned human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor, forcing Apple to issue a security update and earning Mansoor the soubriquet of the 'Million Dollar Dissident'. Prior to his arrest, Mansoor had been communicating with human rights groups outside the UAE using Skype, but in January this year UAE authorities blocked the use of the video-calling app (having already blocked Facetime and the call features in WhatsApp, Facebook, Viber and Snapchat). When thousands of UAE residents signed an online petition on Change.org calling for Skype to be reinstated, the authorities blocked access to Change.org as well. The UAE’s Thought Police are nothing if not thorough.
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.
“If the UAE’s labour exploitation was white-on-black instead of Arab-on-Asian, few UK writers would be comfortable enjoying the festival’s lavish hospitality.”
Dubai’s building and services industries are dependant on the existence of an underclass of Asian migrant workers, many of whom work in conditions that have been described as “very close to slavery”. A recent Guardian article by Nick Cohen likened the relationship between the UAE’s Arab elite and its migrant underclass to apartheid. If the UAE’s labour exploitation was white-on-black instead of Arab-on-Asian, few UK writers would be comfortable enjoying the festival’s lavish hospitality. Exploitation is exploitation, no matter which race is on top, but the differing demographics of the UAE's modern day slavery does not seem to trigger the post-colonial guilt of UK writers in the way that South Africa's did.
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.
"By acting as window dressing for the UAE’s showcase literary events, respectable UK writers are helping to give the impression that their government sponsors are also respectable."
As the situation stands, instead of helping to curb censorship and other human rights abuses in the UAE, many eminent UK writers are helping to whitewash over them. By acting as window dressing for the UAE’s state-sponsored showcase literary events, respectable UK writers are helping to give the impression that their government sponsors are also respectable.
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.
Human Rights Campaigner and Martin Ennals Laureate Ahmed Mansoor was arrested by the UAE government on Sunday.
After last month’s blog about the unethical sponsorship of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature I was not intending to return to the topic this year. But after the events of the last few days, culminating in the arrest on Sunday of prominent UAE human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor, I feel obliged to do so.
February’s blog was written in support of the International Campaign for Freedom in the United Arab Emirates’ festival campaign. Rather than encourage authors to boycott the festival, as last year’s Think Twice Campaign (which I co-organised) had done, the ICFUAE campaign encouraged UK authors attending this year’s festival to use their appearance as an opportunity to voice their support for human rights, free speech and democracy in the UAE.
The ICFUAE wrote an open letter to UK authors attending the festival and tweeted authors to draw their attention to it.
The ICFUAE published an open letter addressed to the UK authors appearing at the festival pointing out that, while UK citizens are accustomed to speaking freely and criticising their government, UAE citizens are routinely persecuted by the festival’s sponsors for exercising these same rights. The letter encouraged authors to highlight the need for greater human rights and freedom of expression in the UAE when tweeting, blogging or posting about the festival on social media. The ICFUAE tweeted authors directly to draw their attention to the letter and English PEN and The Society of Authors also shared the letter widely on Twitter.
Disappointingly, the ICFUAE tell me that they are not aware of any UK authors who highlighted their concerns for human rights in their festival coverage. The author coverage that I have seen has generally presented a glamorous, rose-tinted view of the UAE, emphasising the opportunities for cultural exchange that the festival offers. I don't doubt the positive effects of this exchange, or that the festival does good work in other areas, but I don’t accept that this good work justifies authors ignoring the overwhelming number of human rights violations carried out by the festival's sponsors.
One of the authors who blogged about this year’s festival is children’s author Philip Reeve. I’m a big fan of Reeve’s books, so I was particularly disappointed to read the following paragraph on his blog referring to last year’s Think Twice Campaign.
I entirely reject Reeve’s suggestion that the Think Twice Campaign did not have any significant positive effect. The aim of many boycotts is to raise public awareness of an overlooked issue and, by doing so, encourage change. I don't think that it's "absurd" to suggest that the Artists Against Apartheid group who pledged not to perform at Sun City in South Africa, helped to focus the world’s attention on South African apartheid and that this attention helped to encourage the South African government to abolish the apartheid system. The principal aim of the Think Twice Campaign was to raise awareness of the plethora of human rights violations carried out by the festival’s sponsors. Reeve may have been aware that Emirates Airline are an institutionally homophobic company, owned by an oppressive government that presides over a modern-day slave state, but the feedback received by the Think Twice Campaign made it clear that many people were not.
The UAE human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor has said that “the root cause of so much of the violence in the region is despair. Human rights are being violated on a daily basis and nobody in the outside world seems to care.” I’d like to think that, as far as the UK is concerned, the problem is not so much a lack of care as a lack of awareness. The small gang of wealthy autocratic rulers that form the UAE government has become very proficient at projecting the image of a liberal, progressive country to an overseas audience. They employ a two-pronged strategy, investing copious amounts of sponsorship money in high-profile international sporting and cultural institutions that present the UAE in a favourable light, while persecuting, imprisoning and torturing UAE residents who dare to present a less than glowing view of the country. The cases of Australian illustrator Jodi Magi and US aviation consultant Shez Cassim show that even foreign citizens can fall victim to the UAE’s sociopathic obsession with whitewashing its image.
This two-pronged strategy has been particularly conspicuous in the two weeks since the close of this year’s festival. As returning UK authors posted blogs about their glamorous adventures in Dubai, the UAE government has been quietly tightening its stranglehold on freedom of expression within the country.
On 15 March, just five days after the close of the festival, a UAE court sentenced Jordanian journalist and poet Tayseer al-Najjar to three years in prison and a $136,000 fine for the crime of “insulting the state’s symbols” in his Facebook posts. Tayseer had been held without access to a lawyer for more than a year before being brought to trial. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/17/uae-jordanian-journalist-convicted
Three days later, on 18 March, as human rights campaigners were preparing to celebrate the release of Osama al-Najjar after a three year prison sentence, the UAE government announced that Osama would remain behind bars. Osama had been imprisoned for tweeting his concerns about the ill-treatment of his father, Hussain Ali al-Najjar al-Hammadi, one of many prisoners of conscience convicted in what Amnesty International describe as a “grossly unfair mass trial” of 94 government critics in 2013. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/03/uae-decision-not-to-release-osama-al-najjar-indefensible/
Last Sunday, 19 March, UAE authorities launched a midnight raid on human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor, carrying out a lengthy room by room search of his home and arresting Ahmed. His family has yet to be informed of his whereabouts.
Amnesty International have described Ahmed as "the last free human rights activist in the UAE". His arrest was the latest development in a sustained state-sponsored persecution campaign that has seen him fired from his job and his bank account robbed of $140,000. He has received numerous death threats, been beaten repeatedly and the UAE authorities have gone to extraordinary lengths in their attempts to hack his phone.
After imprisoning Ahmed for eight months in 2011 for the crime of “insulting officials”, the UAE government confiscated his passport, forcing him to remain in the country. Despite everything he has been through, Ahmed has continued to speak out against human rights violations within the UAE and in 2015 a jury of ten global human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, awarded him the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in recognition of his courageous work.
Amnesty International have said that they are “appalled and dismayed” by Ahmed’s arrest and expressed “fears that he may be at risk of torture or other ill-treatment while in custody.”
The UK book community has a history of standing up for others. In recent years, fundraising campaigns for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan and the Syrian conflict have made me feel proud to be a member of that community. But, in the last few days, the way that so many UK authors and illustrators have turned a blind eye to human rights violations in the UAE has made me feel ashamed to be a part of that community.
I would have thought that authors and illustrators would be one group of people that would recognise freedom of expression as a fundamental human right. Freedom of expression is being brutally suppressed RIGHT NOW in the UAE. Tayseer al-Najjar, Osama al-Najjar and Ahmed Mansoor are not characters in a book – they are real people with real families, enduring real suffering for daring to speak out against a tyrannical government.
Whatever you think of the Emirates Festival,if you are an author or an illustrator and you genuinely care about freedom of expression and human rights in the UAE, please use whatever channels you can to speak out and demand the release of Ahmed Mansoor and the other prisoners of conscience being unjustly held by the UAE government.
Go on! Please make me feel proud again.
Whether you are an author, an illustrator or anyone else, here are a few ways you might make your voice heard.
Representatives of global human rights organisations explain Ahmed's critical role in defending human rights in the UAE in the video below.
UPDATE 29 March (19 days after the close of 2017 Emirates Festival)
After being forcibly disappeared, held in secret detention for months and subjected to beatings and deliberate sleep deprivation, a UAE court has sentenced prominent economist, academic and human rights defender Dr Nasser bin Ghaith to ten years in prison. His "crime" was to criticise the UAE government on Twitter. His official conviction was for “posting false information” about UAE leaders and their policies and “posting false information in order to harm the reputation and stature of the State and one of its institutions”. Amnesty have said that "by imposing this ludicrous sentence in response to his peaceful tweets, the authorities have left no room for doubt: those who dare to speak their minds freely in the UAE today risk grave punishment". https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/03/uae-prominent-academic-jailed-for-10-years-over-tweets-in-outrageous-blow-to-freedom-of-expression
This time last year Zoe Toft and I were busy running the Think Twice Campaign, which highlighted ethical concerns about the sponsorship of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai. The festival's main sponsors are Emirates Airline and the Dubai Government (who are the airline’s owners). The festival’s patron, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is both the ruler of Dubai and the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). One of the aims of the campaign was to highlight the many human rights violations taking place under the Sheik’s regime.
Zoe and I knew that the campaign would be contentious. Many authors and illustrators we admired and respected had appeared at the festival in the past or were due to appear in 2016. And the festival has a reputation for being exceptionally well-organised by a friendly and hospitable team. We were uncomfortable with putting ourselves at odds with these respectable groups, but our concern was that their respectability was being used to whitewash the reputations of extremely unethical sponsors. Actor Mark Rylance expressed a similar concern last year when he announced that he would not work for the Royal Shakespeare Company while they were sponsored by BP. We were not attacking the people appearing at or running the festival any more than Rylance was attacking the people appearing at or running the RSC. Our target was the festival’s sponsors.
We recognised that not everyone that shared our concerns would want to boycott the festival and at the top of Think Twice's FAQ page we suggested that authors and illustrators who still wished to appear at the festival might use their appearance to raise awareness of some of the issues highlighted by the campaign. Writer and philosopher AC Grayling and children’s author Chris Haughton did exactly that by meeting with UAE human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor during their stay in Dubai. Grayling addressed the UAE’s poor record on free expression during his public talks and Haughton blogged about his meeting with Mansoor on his return.
Although Zoe and I have now wound up the Think Twice Campaign, we would also like to encourage the festival's authors and illustrators to consider speaking out on behalf of the following three groups whose human rights are being systematically abused by the festival’s sponsors.
1: The migrant workers enduring conditions “very close to slavery”
“It's pretty depressing seeing how many western companies and tourists, all kinds of people, flock there and still describe it and see it as this paradise in the Middle East, ignoring what's right in front of their nose.” Investigative Journalist Ben Anderson
When Donald Trump sang the praises of Dubai Airport in last year’s presidential debates, he neglected to mention the inhumane labour practices that enabled the Dubai Government to build such grandiose structures so quickly and for so little money. The 2016 HBO VICE documentary “Trump in Dubai” exposes the plight of the migrant ‘underclass’ that make up more than 80% of the emirate’s workforce and build many of Dubai’s landmark developments including the new Trump International Golf Club. Investigative journalist Ben Anderson describes the conditions endured by millions of Dubai’s migrant workers as “very close to slavery” and has this to say about western attitudes towards the city in the video below: “It's pretty depressing seeing how many western companies and tourists, all kinds of people, flock there and still describe it and see it as this paradise in the Middle East, ignoring what is right in front of their nose.”
Anderson's documentary focuses on the construction industry, but he mentions that similar labour abuses apply to migrants working as cleaners, cooks and housemaids in Dubai. In the Human Rights Watch video below Women’s Rights Researcher Rothna Begum explains how the UAE government “facilitates and fosters the abuse and exploitation of domestic workers” who are explicitly excluded from the country's labour laws.
As you enjoy the hospitality of Dubai’s impressive airports, hotels, conference centres and schools, please be aware that many of these buildings are built, maintained and serviced by people who are treated as an “underclass” by the festival’s sponsors and do what you can to draw attention to their plight.
2: The LGBT people criminalised in, or barred from entering, Dubai
When it was announced that Jennifer Anniston was to become the new face of Emirates Airline in 2015, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) urged the actor to think twice about associating herself with the airline in view of their “serious concerns about the way the Gulf carriers treat and manage their flight crews, particularly women and gay men.”
Emirates Airline’s reputation for discriminating against gay employees (and, on some occasions, gay passengers) is unsurprising given the anti-gay stance of the government that owns it. Homosexuality is strictly forbidden in Dubai and punishable by harsh, discriminatory laws which promote homophobia.
"I will not lend my name to festivals associated with regimes that persecute their LGBT citizens. I won't strut my stuff in a country where I would not be allowed to live openly and honestly without fear of arrest, incarceration or torture." Crime Writer Val McDermid
Voicing her support for the Think Twice campaign, crime writer Val McDermid said that: "I will not lend my name to festivals associated with regimes that persecute their LGBT citizens. I won't strut my stuff in a country where I would not be allowed to live openly and honestly without fear of arrest, incarceration or torture." Others may see things differently and I’m told that gay authors have accepted invitations to appear at the festival. However it seems unlikely that any transgender authors will have been invited, given that transgender people are regularly barred from entering or deported from Dubai and even cross-dressing is a criminal offence within the emirate.
If you care about LGBT rights, please do what you can to encourage the festival’s sponsors to be more accepting and inclusive towards LGBT people.
3: The UAE citizens imprisoned and tortured by the festival’s sponsors for peacefully campaigning for more democracy and human rights in the UAE
UAE human rights and democracy campaigners are routinely persecuted for speaking out against Sheik Mohammed’s government. More than 100 peaceful activists and critics of the UAE government have been imprisoned on broad and vague national security-related charges since the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature was launched in 2009. Most of them remain in prison today, including Dubai citizen Dr Mohammed al-Roken whose case is highlighted in the Amnesty International video below.
“Despite their good intentions, the festival’s supporters risk legitimizing the practice of censorship in the country.” UAE Censorship Victim
Shez Cassim
The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature presents itself as promoting the free exchange of ideas. Many people have commented on the bitter irony of such an event being sponsored by a government that is brutally suppressing the free exchange of ideas among its own population. Even foreign nationals can fall foul of Dubai’s draconian censorship laws for the most innocent of reasons; in August last year UK-Australian citizen Scott Richards was arrested for the "crime" of posting a link on his Facebook page to a US charity raising funds for blankets and socks for refugee children. Another victim of the UAE's intolerance towards freedom of expression, Shez Cassim, has warned that “despite their good intentions, the festival’s supporters risk legitimizing the practice of censorship in the country.”
If you have the freedom to speak freely at the festival, please consider speaking out on behalf of those whose voices are being suppressed by the festival’s sponsors.
“The root cause of so much of the violence in the region is despair. Human rights are being violated on a daily basis and nobody in the outside world seems to care.” UAE Human Rights Campaigner Ahmed Mansoor
On receiving the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, UAE Human Rights Campaigner Ahmed Mansoor commented that, “the root cause of so much of the violence in the region is despair. Human rights are being violated on a daily basis and nobody in the outside world seems to care.” If you care about human rights in Dubai and the wider UAE, please consider using your appearance at the festival as an opportunity to speak out about them.
If you’re willing to raise awareness of the issues highlighted above, you could mention them in the social media or blog coverage you produce regarding the festival. You might even consider raising some issues during your appearance at the festival itself. And, if you’d like to offer your support to local human rights activists during your visit to Dubai, please contact me or Zoe on info@eafolthinktwice.org.uk and we can put you in touch with people who can help you to arrange this.
If you’re not comfortable raising awareness of these issues, then please think twice about posting photos or making comments on social media or blogs that could be interpreted as promoting or endorsing either Emirates Airline or the Dubai Government. For example, if you share APFA’s concerns about Emirates Airline’s discrimination towards women and gay men, you could avoid mentioning the airline or including photos of their logo/branding in your tweets/Facebook posts.
UPDATE: 30 March 2017
Disappointingly, the ICFUAE are not aware of any UK authors who highlighted their concerns for human rights in their coverage of the 2017 Festival. Immediately after the close of the 2017 festival, the UAE government launched a further crackdown on freedom of expression and human rights in the country. As part of this crackdown the UAE's last remaining human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor (quoted above) was arrested. Amnesty International have said that they are “appalled and dismayed” by Ahmed’s arrest and expressed “fears that he may be at risk of torture or other ill-treatment while in custody.”
The post below was originally written for the news page of the Think Twice campaign web site. The campaign, which was instigated by book blogger Zoe Toft and myself, encourages authors and illustrators to 'think twice' about attending the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai on the grounds that the festival is sponsored by an environmentally unfriendly company owned by an oppressive government.
With this year’s festival now over, we are winding down the campaign. However the Think Twice website will remain online and we will continue to accept new signatories to our pledge.
The principle aim of this campaign was to raise awareness of the three key issues highlighted on our homepage, which we have achieved. The debate the campaign provoked online (and off-line) has helped to highlight the oppression of free speech and human rights in the UAE as outlined in English PEN and Human Rights Watch’s open letter to festival patron Sheik Mohammed, which was published as the festival drew to a close.
We’re pleased to say that the response to the campaign has generally been very positive, however there have been some exceptions. Critics of the campaign have argued that the festival promotes cultural exchange and a love of literature. We accept this point, but the same could be said of all book festivals, most of which give these same benefits without lending their respectability to a sponsor who is so morally reprehensible. The fact that this particular festival presents itself as promoting free speech, while being funded by a government that is brutally suppressing free speech among its own citizens, seems especially inappropriate. In short, we don’t accept that sponsorship by an environmentally unfriendly company owned by an oppressive government is a “necessary evil” that authors should be prepared to accept in return for a book festival.
The one major regret we have about the campaign is that we were unable to get more authors and illustrators to engage with the issue of aviation-induced climate change. Some people have suggested that it was inappropriate to combine climate change and human rights issues in the same campaign. We disagree entirely; climate change is very much a human rights issue. Amnesty International have described climate change as “one of the greatest human rights challenges of our time". Savio Carvalho, Amnesty’s Senior Advisor on International Development and Human Rights addresses the subject thus in this article:
“What has climate change got to do with human rights?
Extreme weather-related disasters and rising seas will destroy homes and ruin people’s ability to earn a living. What’s more, unless emissions are reduced significantly, around 600 million people are likely to experience drought and famine as a result of climate change. So you can see there’s a direct link between climate change and human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water and housing.”
Climate scientists and environmental campaigners have made it clear that the continuing growth of the aviation industry is critically undermining efforts to keep global warming beneath the 2ºC limit needed to avert climate catastrophe. Earlier this week, the World Wildlife Fund, Transport and Environment (a coalition of European environmental organisations) and other environmental groups launched the FlightPath 1.5 campaign to address “the defining global climate change issue of 2016: reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the airline industry.” As well as urging world leaders to confront the aviation industry, the campaign aims to educate “the public about the importance of this unaddressed issue".
The FlightPath 1.5 campaign aims to educate the public about threat posed by aviation-induced climate change.
The problem is that, while domestic flights are covered by the carbon budgets of individual nations, international flights are not. So, while other industries have been working hard to reduce their CO2 emissions, the aviation’s industry’s emissions have more than doubled in the last twenty years. The festival’s sponsor, Emirates Airline, have led the way in exploiting this loophole, outstripping all other airlines by a considerable margin. The international passenger kilometres flown in 2015 by the top 5 international carriers are shown in the graph below.
And, rather than curb their growth, Emirates have announced plans to double the size of their fleet. As such, Emirates are by far the worst offenders in an industry that has consistently prioritised corporate profit ahead of the welfare of future generations.
Setting the issue of ethical sponsorship aside, we hope that this campaign will help authors and illustrators who are genuinely concerned about climate change to recognise the immense impact air travel may be having on their personal carbon footprint. One Emirates Festival author's return flight from London to Dubai generates almost as much CO2 as the average UK citizen produces in an entire year and more than three times the CO2 produced by the average Indian citizen*. For authors and illustrators who fly once a year or more, probably the most effective thing they can do to help combat climate change will be to cut back on their flying.
For many authors and illustrators this may mean attending fewer international festivals and conferences in person (regardless of their sponsorship). The academic community are already leading the way in this respect. The Flying Lesscampaign is helping to reduce flying by members of academic institutions and professional associations. Launched in October last year, it already has 352 signatories. In the interests of future generations, we hope that the literary community will also recognise the urgent need to cut back on its flying.
* The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature flies UK authors to Dubai by Business Class on Emirates Airlines. Heathrow to Dubai Business Class return trip on a scheduled flight = 5.106 tonnes CO2 emissions
(Source: Atmosfair emissions calculator 2019 https://www.atmosfair.de/en/) Per capita annual CO2 emissions: UK 5.65 tonnes, India 1.57 tonnes (Source: Statista 2016 figures https://www.statista.com/chart/16292/per-capita-co2-emissions-of-the-largest-economies/)
While I generally try to keep the tone of this blog light (some might say trivial) I occasionally feel obliged to post about weightier issues. This is one of those posts. Sorry if it feels a bit ranty in places, but it’s something I care about.
With climate change a driving force behind tragedies such as Typhoon Haiyan and the Syrian conflict
as well as problems nearer to home, isn’t it time we cut back on CO2 intensive aviation emissions?
Today book blogger Zoe Toft and I are launching the Think Twice campaign to highlight ethical concerns about the sponsorship of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai.
Generally speaking, I’m all for businesses funding the promotion of literature and literacy through the sponsorship of book festivals, book awards, reading programmes or other initiatives. However it should be recognised that both sides benefit from a sponsorship deal. For a business, sponsoring an event like an international book festival is a PR opportunity. By associating themselves with high-profile, respected authors and illustrators, a business raises its own profile and gains respectability.
Authors and illustrators are usually happy to offer a little respectability by association in exchange for sponsorship. However there are exceptions; Nestlé and Amazon-sponsored book awards have been shelved in recent years as a result of authors taking a principled stand against sponsors they regard as unethical. Ethics are subjective and individual authors and illustrators will differ on where they choose to draw the line. The Think Twice Campaign hopes to persuade many authors and illustrators that Emirates Airline are on the wrong side of that line.
Each year the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature hosts an impressive roll call of prominent figures from the world of literature including many popular UK authors and illustrators. Emirates Airline, the festival’s sponsor, is wholly owned by the Dubai government, part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Think Twice Campaign offers three good reasons why UK authors and illustrators might want to think twice about attending the festival in 2016 or future years:
FREE SPEECH: Political opponents are persecuted, tortured and imprisoned by the airline’s owners. Amnesty International estimate that at least 67 critics of the UAE government are currently in prison for speaking out in favour of greater democracy and government accountability.
By publicly pledging their support for the campaign, authors and illustrators can send the message that:
The Dubai government must stop suppressing free speech and treat people fairly and without discrimination, regardless of their sex, sexuality or status.
Emirates Airline and the rest of the aviation industry must help to tackle climate change by reducing their CO2 emissions.
Many authors and illustrators we admire and respect have attended the festival in the past or are booked to attend this year. Although we hope that the campaign will encourage those booked for 2016 to think twice about their decision, the campaign won’t be singling out or targeting individual authors and illustrators. The only people the campaign will be pointing the finger at are the airline and the government that owns it.
You can find further information on all of the issues we're highlighting at the campaign website eafolthinktwice.org.uk.
Personally, I think any one of the three issues listed above is enough on its own to make Emirates Airline an unacceptable sponsor. However I’m going to devote the rest of this post to climate change as I think this issue is possibly the least tangible of the three, but in urgent need of addressing.
As mentioned above, the continuing growth of Emirates and the rest of the airline industry is critically undermining the efforts made by other sectors to avert climate catastrophe. Transport & Environment, a coalition of environmental organisations from across Europe, have said that the omission of both aviation and shipping from last December’s Paris Climate Change agreement makes it “close to impossible” to limit global warming to less than 2ºC, the level above which scientists say the world will see the most severe impacts of climate change.
Despite the efforts of environmental groups, both aviation and shipping were dropped from the Paris Climate Change agreement. (Image from Transport & Environment web site)
Climate change is already responsible for killing an estimated 315,000 people every year and that figure is set to escalate as global warming continues. The increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as Typhoon Haiyan, has been directly linked to climate change. It was also a key driver in the Syrian conflict and is likely to trigger similar conflicts in the future. And scientists have concluded that climate change was partly responsible for this winter's UK floods and has significantly increased the likelihood of further UK flooding.
I recognise that the Think Twice campaign is unlikely to make a huge profit-driven business like Emirates Airline think twice about increasing their corporate carbon footprint. However I am hoping that the campaign will encourage individuals – not just authors and illustrators – to consider the impact that aviation has on their personal carbon footprint.
Aviation is one of the most emissions-intensive forms of transport; travelling by plane generates between five and ten times as much emissions as travelling by train. And flying allows us to travel far greater distances than we otherwise could. As a result of these two factors, travelling by air can often have an an immense impact on an individual person's carbon footprint.
If you’re worried about the threat climate change poses to future generations, then reducing your meat consumption, insulating your house, turning off unnecessary lights and minimising car use are all worth doing, but the amount of emissions saved by such measures is tiny compared with the amount generated by taking a flight. To put it simply:
If you fly once a year or more, probably the most effective thing you can do to help combat climate change is cut back on your flying.
A family of four taking a return flight to Majorca (the most popular overseas destination with UK holidaymakers) creates more CO2 than an average UK household generates in an entire year’s electricity use. And a family holiday further afield can result in a household’s annual carbon footprint (combined emissions for gas, electricity, car, aviation and other transport) more than doubling in size.
UK citizens fly more than any other nation. (click image to enlarge) Source: TGI
It’s true that travel broadens the mind. The problem with air travel is that it does so at the expense of those far less fortunate than the traveller and threatens the welfare of generations to come.
If nothing else, I hope the Think Twice Campaign will encourage more people to think twice about flying.
