LONDON (Dispatches) – The government of Qatar said on Monday it was taking the United Arab Emirates to the United Nations’ International Court of Justice over what it described as human right violations.
Last June, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the UAE imposed a land, naval and air blockade on import-dependent Qatar, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism, an allegation strongly denied by Doha.
The Saudi-led bloc also presented Qatar with a list of steep demands and gave it an ultimatum to comply with them or face consequences.
Doha, however, refused to meet the demands and stressed that it would not abandon its independent foreign policy.
Qatar’s Ministry of Economy and Commerce has ordered shops to strip shelves of products imported from the four boycotting countries.
The order came after UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash on Friday accused Qatar of seeking "to target the security of its neighbors and support extremism and terrorism in the region."
"I hope that a year from the boycott will produce a new thought and a wise approach in Doha," he tweeted.
The Saudi-led quartet presented Qatar with a list of demands and gave it an ultimatum to comply or face consequences. The demands included closing the Doha-based Al Jazeera broadcaster, removing Turkish troops from Qatar’s soil, scaling back ties with Iran, and ending relations with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement.
The quartet also imposed sanctions against Doha, including restrictions on Qatari aircraft using the airspace of the four countries. To further pressure Qatar, Saudi Arabia totally closed its land border with its tiny neighbor, through which much of Qatar’s food supply crossed.
Qatar, however, refused to yield and denounced the demands as unreasonable, saying its sovereignty had been attacked. In return, the four boycotting countries vowed to impose further sanctions.
Following the embargo, both Iran and Turkey opened up their airspace and trade routes for Qatar and supplied food and other necessary data-x-items to the Arab country.