Human Rights Organizations called various groups and states to intervene in what they call the unjust trial and unfair prison condition of Ahmed Mansoor.
After international outlets released a jail letter sent by incarcerated Emirati human rights campaigner in 2021, the country’s authorities reacted. According to HRW, the letter detailed mistreatment against Ahmed Mansoor while in custody and the process of his unjust trial.
Upon the publishing of the letter half a year ago, UAEofficials relocated Mansoor to a smaller and more secluded cell. Human Rights Watch announced in a statement yesterday that administrative agencies also limited Mansoor’s access to vital medical treatment. He has no permission to own his study glasses either.
Since his detention, Mansoor has been primarily in isolation, segregated from other inmates, and refused a sleeping equipment. The UN was urged to, openly or in privacy, push for lifting Mansoor’s seclusion and his unconditional release by HRW.
The group also called the Washington, London, and other Emirati allies to take steps en route. “Allies have been helping to promote the UAE’s narrative of a tolerant and culturally open country while ignoring rampant abuses, including the legal railroading and ghastly mistreatment of one of its most respected citizens,” said deputy regional director at HRW.
Unprecedented in three decades, UN members voted the UAE into the UNSC for a one-year term starting in 2022. The country also received the UN Human Rights Council membership for another time two months ago.
The membership in UN Human Rights council was also another part of HRW Middle East deputy director. Michael Page asserted that “the UN Human Rights Council should not keep silent while its member, the UAE, flagrantly violates human rights standards and blocks UN and other international and independent monitors from accessing its prisons.”
Ahmed Mansoor; A Controversial Letter
Ahmed Mansoor has been under bars in the al-Sadr incarceration center near the capital since May 29, 2018. He is undergoing a 10-year term that ends in 2028. After what HRW describes as an unjust trial on false claims, the State Security Chamber of the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict.
Mansoor alleges that the officials kept him in prolonged solitary confinement and denied him basic requirements. He explained that the prison authorities deprived him of communication with other inmates or outer environment in a prison letter.
Following the publishing of letter in Arabi21, HRW and GCHR issued a study under the title of “The Persecution of Ahmed Mansoor: How the United Arab Emirates Silenced its Most Famous Human Rights Activist”. The Study was released early last year and detailed the maltreatments.
A GCHR officials said that Ahmed Mansoor is exposed to a sharply hazardous condition that may end in his death. “Besides completely isolating him from outside and preventing necessary medical care, authorities are working systematically to psychologically break him down. This requires urgent action by all international mechanisms and governments concerned with human rights to save his life,” Ibrahim further explicated the present condition.
Ahmed Mansoor has been under harsh abuse of personal freedoms by Abu Dhabi for more than a decade. Arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, hate mail, violent abuse, government monitoring, and harsh treatment in captivity are some of the abuses that Mansoor went through in the past decade.
Under the hope for better condition or a personal responsibility for divulging the truth, Mansoor penned and published the letter. The response by Abu Dhabi was harsh, inappropriate, and unjust considering basic international human rights conventions.
