Anyone living in Dubai — thoughts on Sheikha Latifa documentary

[Brocade]

Having just watched the BBC documentary ‘Escape from Dubai’ (just now, BBC2), about Sheikha Latifa’s escape attempts, I wondered what, if anything, people were saying on the ground in Dubai.

Nothing from Sheikh Mo officially in response, and nothing I can see in the UAE newspapers, not surprisingly, but I remember the rumours about royal disappearances, house arrests and punishments when I lived there, and I followed the few stories in the UK press about the escape attempts of Shamsa subsequently.

I just wondered what the bush telegraph was saying locally these days.

Bump?

Bump again.

I’m not in Dubai, but would also be really interested in knowing what people’s thoughts are.

Until very recently, I lived in Dubai.
nothing was said about her.
nothing.
Radio silence, unsurprisingly.

I watched this too and was gripped!

I can't see that I'll ever visit Dubai, but I'd love to hear what people think of life for a woman over there. I had no idea it was as dehumanising as that documentary suggested, but I suppose that's the point; a lot of effort is made to present it externally as progressive. I wonder how it appears on the ground, so to speak.

Well, it is perfectly progressive for a woman on a daily basis, as it would have been perfectly ordinary for Daniel Hedges, until you step out of line. Both were mistreated, but as a foreign national, DH at least had (some) consular support and a UK-based wife working to keep his case in the public domain, and there was the face-saving measure of ‘we still think you’re guilty of spying and do not admit any wrong-doing, but we’ll pardon you because we value our relations with the UK’.

Latifa, ironically, as an Emirati royal, is (we presume) has far less power, being illegally imprisoned by her own family in her own country. Her family are so powerful that no one internally within the UAE will object, and no Emirati police or judicial system will investigate — remember the Sheikh Issa ‘trial’ in neighbouring Abu Dhabi, where, despite the fact that he was filmed torturing an Afghan man, he was found not guilty and the person who leaked the film was convicted in absentia? As regards Latifa’s sister Shamsa, who was forcibly repatriated to the UAE from Cambridge, it seems the UAE can buy silence from the UK, too. That investigation has been cut off.

I heard lots of this kind of rumour (about some misbehaving al-Makhtoum sons, too, not just daughters) when I lived in Dubai, so while I would be very surprised if anything was in the local press, I did wonder what whispers were doing the rounds, because we used to hear more that way.

My feelings are though that even if you had heard things you wouldn't risk posting about them if you lived there because you mark yourself as a target and like has been mentioned here would be very vulnerable to something happening but without the ability to get any info out to help yourself.

I don’t think that someone who is not already known to the Dubai authorities posting a rumour on an anonymous forum hosted in another country is likely to be putting themselves at significant risk.

Dubai has alarmingly excellent electronic surveillance, but are unlikely to be keeping tabs on random expats in Arabian Ranches. Which is why I’m baffled by how naive Matthew Hedges was, when he, of anyone, should have known what he was dealing with.

My mum is fed up of England and would of like to of taken a job offer up there as she’s fed up of all the stuff going on in this country. I pointed out she was thinking of a country where you can be arrested for being raped! Our conviction rate is shocking, I’m disgusted children are known to be abused like the Rotherham case (except it’s country wide) and nothing is done but at least the victims are locked up when they speak up

I watched this on catch up TV. Horrifying. The sheikh obviously has fantastic PR because when we lived in Dubai we thought he was one of the good ones! We were only there 6 months and it felt such a freedom when we left. I know that sounds trite, especially in the circumstances. We had no hardship or lack of freedom, but the lifestyle and culture just was not for us.

How brave of all those people involved in the escape, particularly her Finnish friend.

I was appalled by that documentary and what he did to his own children. I guess having 23 by different wives however he wasn't close to these girls and maybe that makes it much easier to have them tortured, drugged killed whatever?

Unlike a normal close family unit.

His own dd wrote he treated women as sub humans. I must say I've never fancied dubai, loathe the fact its built on slave labour from North Korea etc.. The footage of someone beating that Afghans worker, 😳😢. But this is beyond the beyond...

If this was black people being treated like this they would be pariah s and slapped with sanctions. And yet we allow this man who loves UK respectability and we allow him into royal ascot.

If I was there I would be turning my back in protest.

...agreed Elf, we "welcome" him here and yet there are protests about Donald Trump.

Indeed apparently trumps... Offensive comments are worse than a ruler keeping all women in restrictive harsh conditions and kidnapping and possibly killing his own daughter. That's OK.

Very sad story, disgusting treatment of women. Have heard it said in UAE "our women are our flowers". Vast cultural gap, it must be hard for European women to live there without unintentionally causing offence, maybe breaking the law. UAE has been comfortably in bed with our RF and successive governments since the late 60s as its rulers are extremely open handed and our rulers love a freebie. There is no chance of any British help for these poor women, no interference in the internal affairs of a foreign nation. A boycott wouldn't go amiss, though, there are other places to holiday.

it must be hard for European women to live there without unintentionally causing offence, maybe breaking the law.

Not at all. It's not Saudi, and I think some responses on here seem to be conflating Dubai and Jeddah. It's perfectly possible to live a largely western life there, whether male or female, keeping your head down, and not drawing the attention of the authorities. (I did, for a couple of years.)

Dubai, of all the emirates, has put a lot of effort into looking western-facing and liberal, to the point where I doubt many of the western holidaymakers who go there know it's essentially a tribal dictatorship.

Even Emirati citizens (a tiny minority of the population, which is mostly expat) don't have a vote, and there are no political parties -- apart from the seven hereditary emirate leaders, and the family members they appoint into key roles, there is only since 2006 a 40-member Federal Council, half of which is appointed by the government, and whose role is only advisory. It's a country run by a series of wealthy, powerful, intermarried, very patriarchal families.

There are restrictions on freedom of association and assembly -- NGOs need government permits to operate, textbooks are censored, public meetings need official permission, there is no right to strike against poor work conditions. The justice system (divided between Sharia and civil law) is not independent. All legal decisions are subject to government supervision. Emirati dissidents asking for greater power for the Federal Council have been imprisoned or had their passports confiscated, and the UAE helped suppress Bahrain's independence movement during the Arab Spring.

There is no freedom of the press -- media outlets may not circulate “defamatory material and negative material about presidents, friendly countries, [and] religious issues” or face huge fines. And of course journalists can be deported at no notice anyway.

So Sheikh Mo doesn't need 'good PR'. No one inside the UAE will publish anything negative about him and his family.

Sheikh Issa, the half-brother of the current ruler of Abu Dhabi, was filmed torturing and sexually assaulting an Afghan man the footage is still publicly available and was found not guilty by an Abu Dhabi court. This caused curiously little international outrage.

The fact is that the UAE is considered western-friendly and a key anti-terrorist ally in the region, so there is very little political will to cause a fuss on 'internal matters' like the disappearance of a royal family member.

Interesting. So a European woman is permitted a free lifestyle? Alcohol? Clothing? Free to speak as she sees fit? How free can you be within their parameters? I find Dubai confusing, it looks like a modern Babylon, I saw on tv women in skimpy swimwear. Is this tolerance just in the Dubai tourist town? Do the tourists just stick to the hotels and shopping malls?

Do the tourists just stick to the hotels and shopping malls?

I know a British woman who holidayed in Dubai and was escorted out of a shopping centre for not being appropriately dressed (she was wearing a maxi dress, not a bikini!). But she’d been out for a meal earlier in the same outfit with no problems. I’d never visit for fear of unintentionally causing offence.

Alcohol is sold within almost all 4/5 star Dubai hotels for tourists. If you have a work visa, you can apply for an alcohol licence which allows you to spend up to a certain percentage of your income on alcohol at licenced shops. Other neighbouring emirates like Sharjah are ‘dry’.

There are ‘decency laws covering dress. On beaches you can wear bikinis and normal swimwear, and in touristy spaces such as hotels and malls, while the dress code says to cover shoulders and knees, in practice it’s fairly relaxed (more policed in Ramadan). I lived year-round in wide-legged linen trousers and blouses when I lived there.

PDAs are illegal — hence the various high-profile cases of Brits prosecuted — as is being drunk in public. Living with a member of the opposite sex to whom you arent married is illegal. There were door to door checks in Sharjah for marriage certificates when we lived in Dubai, but Dubai high-end hotels don’t ask for proof of marriage on check-in.

Workers’ visas are linked to their employers — who technically were supposed to hold their passports when we lived there, don’t know whether that’s still the case — and trailing spouses and children are sponsored by the person with the employment visa.

We knew quite a few unmarried couples where one person had followed the other, who couldn’t sponsor them for a residency visa because they weren’t married — so the trailing partner was on a tourist visa and had to nip over the Omani border once a month to renew it. The other large population doing this was foreign prostitutes.

It’s pretty safe being female in many ways — low crime, no street harassment, women-only carriages on public transport and women’s queues in banks and government offices. However, reporting a rape could get you prosecuted for extra-marital sex, and if you’re not a white westerner, FGM isn’t illegal, only not allowed to be done in government hospitals, there’s very little will to stop female trafficking, and labour laws don’t cover (overwhelmingly female) domestic servants, who are at the mercy of exploitative employers (who are legally responsible for them), and very vulnerable.

Not sure what you mean about freedom of speech — there isn’t really a forum for speech that is critical of the authorities. Big clampdown on encrypted email, for instance, and very good surveillance systems.

I just meant general chat, I suppose. For instance, could you and I sit in a cafe speaking as we're writing? Obviously mobiles and internet aren't free of surveillance. I'd be very unsure of acceptable social behaviour. So many human rights abuses also. It's an odd combination of medieval and modern. Very unsettling.

What a tragic story - poor Sheila Latifa. How did they track her on the yacht?

I must say I've never fancied dubai, loathe the fact its built on slave labour from North Korea etc

North Korea etc?

Every Westerner who goes to live or work there is supporting and condoning the slavery and human rights abuses.
Seems their greed for money and material wealth is more important....

I know a British woman who holidayed in Dubai and was escorted out of a shopping centre for not being appropriately dressed (she was wearing a maxi dress, not a bikini!

There are maxi dresses and there are maxi dresses and anyone living in this part of the world has probably seen their fair share of women in maxi dresses who haven't understood the need to wear an underskirt with it if the fabric is thin or see through, especially if you have a thong on underneath. Or the need to wear something on top of it if its a sundress kind of maxi and youre going to the shops or out and about in public - it only needs a shirt or lightweight cardi in your car or in you bag to put on when need be.

I suspect your friend was being very economical with the reality of the situation in order to have good story to tell her friends once home.

What a tragic story - poor Sheila Latifa. How did they track her on the yacht?

Very easily considering the trails they left behind them as well as during the sea voyage.

One thing I wondered about - both sisters - it was never mentioned that they had married. I thought that strange (I know that is the least of it, but it mentioned one of the girls lived with just a mother?). I thought in the middle east they were eager to get girls married off?

Was very uneasy watching. Especially when she was sky diving yet had little or no freedom. I think this is why we get ideas that some places are more 'progressive'. I have even been reading about mixed running groups and women only running groups in Saudi Arabia!!!!