DUBAI (Middle East Eye) – More than two dozen rights groups held an alternative expo on Thursday to pay tribute to human rights defenders that have been detained or persecuted in the United Arab Emirates.
The Persian Gulf nation is hosting the 2020 World Expo, and opened its fair earlier this month with a lavish ceremony that included fireworks and musical performances. The UAE hopes the six-month event will spark an influx of investment after its economy was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
In Thursday’s online event, activists came together with musicians, poets, and visual artists from across the Middle East to share their talents and stand in solidarity with prisoners of conscience, and to highlight rights abuses in the Emirates.
“The country claims that when the world comes together, we create a better tomorrow. In reality, the UAE continues to invest in whitewashing, manipulation, and controlling and monitoring and imprisoning human rights defenders,” said Weaam Youssef, a program manager at the Persian Gulf Center for Human Rights.
“Creating a better world is impossible without the help and contributions of human rights defenders.
“In the UAE, every rights defender has been either exiled [or] imprisoned, in violation of their rights for freedom of expression.”
In the two-hour event, a dozen speakers shared stories of their art and their activism, critical of the governments of the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Cambridge Drops £400mn UAE Deal

In another development, the University of Cambridge has halted its record £400mn collaboration with the United Arab Emirates, following allegations that the Persian Gulf state used Pegasus spying software to hack the phones of journalists and human rights campaigners.
Outgoing vice-chancellor Stephen Toope told the Varsity student newspaper on Thursday that after the Pegasus spyware revelations the university had decided that “it’s not the right time to be pursuing these kinds of really ambitious plans with the UAE”.
When the deal was announced last summer, the university called it a “pioneering collaboration” in the fields of sustainability, education, arts and culture.
“This is an exciting and unique opportunity for world-leading collaborations on efforts to transform economies and societies,” a university spokesperson said in July.
The Cambridge Student Union also criticized the deal when it was announced, saying that the UAE has “a well-documented record of appalling human rights abuses, including extreme gender and sexuality-based discrimination and major infringements on freedom of speech”.
It added that any partnership with the UAE is “fundamentally incompatible with the University’s mission”.