Just one more reason not to visit Dubai

[Soubriquet]

A British woman women is facing jail time for up to two years for telling her flat mate on social media to fuck off during an argument

She has begged the flat mate to drop the case but they have refused

The word fuck is banned there..

link

I think that's when you move overseas you agree to follow their laws.
The law preventing swearing is ridiculous to us Brits but other countries would see our acceptance of cannabis as equally ridiculous.
I'm not saying that laws are always perfect. There's lots of outrageous laws like homosexuality being illegal in some places but if you're a foreigner who moves there then you accept the risk imo.

For those slating it, do you not recognise that it isn't legal for that language to be used? Least their youth of today are better mannered than here, including the kids of expats!

Just live by the law and you'll be fine. I love Dubai, not for everyone which I get but just be a decent human and respect their rules!

Cannabis is illegal in the UK

@CaffineismyBFF

For those slating it, do you not recognise that it isn't legal for that language to be used? Least their youth of today are better mannered than here, including the kids of expats!

Just live by the law and you'll be fine. I love Dubai, not for everyone which I get but just be a decent human and respect their rules!

🙄

Cannabis is illegal in the UK

Yes, but in other countries its legal. That was the pp's point. Not all countries agree on what should or should or should not be against the law.

I also loved my life in the Middle East with a tax free salary. Until I was raped. I had to leave the country I had lived in for two years, pregnant by my rapist, and come back to the U.K. to have the pregnancy terminated.

No one in my job or circle of friends there knows what happened or why I left, in order to protect myself legally. I worked for the royal family/government but didn't even feel like that could protect me.

@MrsTerryPratchett

Or don't move to a country where you can't abide by the rules.

Unjust laws shouldn't be followed.

Who gets to define which laws are unjust?

Personally I have no interest in Dubai but whenever I go to a different country I always follow their laws whether I think they are right or not.

Who'd want to live there anyway? Can't think of many worse places to live.

@Soubriquet

I think some counties are too strict in their laws and have some ridiculous ones too like a woman going to jail because she was raped

Disgusting

If this is the case I'm thinking, that's not quite what happened.

I was living in the UAE at the time.

The woman alleged rape against a male colleague, the male colleague was arrested and he stated that it was consensual sex not rape (still illegal in Dubai if you are not married).

The woman later rescinded the allegation of rape and told the police that it had been consensual sex after all.

The man went to prison for sex out of marriage and the woman went to prison for sec outside of marriage and preventing the course of justice for making allegations of rape which she accepted were false.

She was not imprisoned for being raped.

That's not to say I agree with lots of the laws in the Middle East and wish they'd moved on a bit, but the headline doesn't accurately reflect the facts.

In this case the flat mate is a right bitch, the argument happened via text in October and she waited until the woman was on her way to the airport to report it to the police.

It's another law I disagree with, but putting anything like that in a text in the UAE is a very bad idea, and this case proves why.

'If this is the case I'm thinking, that's not quite what happened.'

I was assuming it was the top story in this article:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/voices/dubai-woman-arrested-gang-rape-uae-sex-crime-local-laws-know-how-common-it-a7422336.html%3famp

They care more about having sex outside marriage then they do about if you've been raped. Not somewhere I'm interested in going.

Amnesty International Gulf researcher Drewery Dyke explains that “rape victims are accused of having engaged in illicit sexual relations”, while “the rape allegations themselves have been left uninvestigated”.
Perhaps the largest judicial drawback to these already troubling laws is the burden of proof the law puts on victims of any kind of sexual assault. A confession from the rapist, for example, as well as four adult male witnesses to corroborate the crime are necessary for the rape accusation to be considered.
www.icfuae.org.uk/uae-in-the-media/burden-proof-sexual-assault-laws-uae

Are we quite sure we have the full facts here? On the face of it, it's awful and really stupid, but we only have a very sketchy story of what was actually said.

[quote UnityUnited]@TheCanyon how much did your healthy 50 year old relatives pay for their vaccinations in Dubai? Personally I much prefer our system where every vial of the vaccine is owned by the state and given out on a needs first basis.
Similarly I have no problem paying taxes too[/quote]
I’m not @TheCanyon but I live in Dubai and was annoyed by your assumption and yet another thinly veiled attempt to attack the UAE.

This week my husband and our nanny have both been vaccinated (I’m pregnant so not eligible)

The vaccine is available free of charge to anyone over the age of 16, irrespective of nationality, income level etc. You literally turn up at a walk in centre, show your ID, sign a form and get the vaccine. You get given an appointment to return 3 weeks later for the second.

Not a fan.

@MrsTerryPratchett

Or don't move to a country where you can't abide by the rules.

Unjust laws shouldn't be followed.

Whilst I personally do not agree with this law, I fortunately don't live in Dubai and have no reason to wish to. But just because you, in your nice little world, decide a law is unjust doesn't make that true, and nor does it give you any right to disobey it. Disobeying the law may be something people have to do - but it is not to be taken lightly. I'd be interested to know if you would be so willing to jump under the bus if the law affected you, or are you simply willing to throw others under it?

There are more than a few people who think the lockdown laws are unjust, and the UN Convention on Human Rights agrees with them. So are those unjust laws, and is it also ok for people to not follow them? Justice is in the eyes of the beholder. The reason I do not live in a country with laws that are determined by Sharia is because I do not agree with those laws. But if I chose to live in one then it would be incumbent upon me to obey the law or face the consequences. Just like I expect people from other countries - or indeed our own - to obey our laws or face the consequences.

You can fully agree the laws are unjust but also think it’s abject stupidity to move to a country where these laws exist, break the law, then cry about it.

This is also illegal in Australia, should we boycott Australia too? Or just countries which don't have a white culture? theconversation.com/swearing-in-public-is-still-illegal-but-you-probably-wont-be-charged-if-youre-white-127512

What about the fact it's illegal to use this kind of language publicly in Britain?
www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q675.htm
And bylaws in towns in the UK garner fines for swearing, introduced recent-ish-ly: www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/07/polite-society-why-are-british-cities-banning-swearing-pspo

At what point do people stop attacking foreign countries and demand change in their own country for having similar laws?

That article a PP posted doesn't refer to the case I was thinking of. The article is from 2016 though and the UAE is making changes in their laws - with expats in mind.

If you see this article from November 2020, drinking alcohol (for expats) has been decriminalised, as has cohabiting with your partner without marriage.

It's baby steps but at least it's steps forward.

www.relocatemagazine.com/news/sweeping-uae-law-changes-to-reassure-expats-dsapsted-1120

Well I do spend my political energy arguing against eg aspects of our sentencing guidelines, our own human rights abuses etc. As for swearing - I’m at the criminal bar. There are offences which could be charged (public order act ss 4 or 5 are examples). Sometime swearing will aggravate another offence. Sometimes if swearing is proving to have caused alarm or distress to another it can be established. Vanishingly rare to be charged just for a swear word and certainly not a no bail situation etc.
I’m ok with being unhappy ablit aspect of our own justice system and being absolutely outraged by others eg us death penalty, many aspects of us sentencing regime, us racist justice system, many countries treatment of women or gay people or immigrants etc.
Just because your own system isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you should take your eye off the ball regarding even more awful injustices surely ?

@PrimeraVez my attack wasn’t thinly veiled. It was an out and out criticism. I don’t have any desire to hide how I feel about the UAE. Why anybody would want to live in a country with such a poor reputation for human rights is beyond me. Oh, hang in a minute, it’s a tax thing isn’t it? Turn a blind eye because you like to earn a lot of money. Nice.

@UnityUnited agree fully

I don’t know how my ex fucking husband survived five years there then.

Having a penis probably helped

How do we consider whether laws are unjust? Well, weighing up the harm caused against the penalty exacted against an offender would be one starting place. I don’t merely ‘disagree’ with laws that allow locking someone up for two years for swearing, I find them thoroughly unreasonable.

I mean, to go the other way you could in theory have a country that doesn’t sanction murder at all. That to me would clearly be unjust.

I don’t really buy into these their country, their laws arguments. It’s not that I don’t try to obey laws when abroad even when I disagree, more than I sympathise with people around the world who are subjected to excessively punitive laws.

And in this particular case, it would be so easy for something like this to slip out in the heat of an argument. So, yes, I find it outrageous and feel sorry for the anyone on the receiving end of this.

@CaffineismyBFF

For those slating it, do you not recognise that it isn't legal for that language to be used? Least their youth of today are better mannered than here, including the kids of expats!

Just live by the law and you'll be fine. I love Dubai, not for everyone which I get but just be a decent human and respect their rules!

Oh my gosh, some of you are so damn smug.

If you like to patronise and live in a country that doesn't treat women in the same way that men are treated then, knock yourselves out. Why you bother posting on a UK chatboard, denizen of sweary people who do all sorts of things Not-OK-in-Dubai.

Perhaps we could get some sort of rubber stamp with this on? Use that as our judicial benchmark? Sounds great.