New videos suggesting that the daughter of the powerful ruler of Dubai says she is being held against her have put a spotlight on human rights violations in the United Arab Emirates.
“I do not want to be a hostage in this prison villa, I just want to be free,” Sheikha Latifa, Mohammed Al Maktoum, said in a video, one of several released by the BBC that apparently put her in a barricade. house show. in the UAE’s brilliant city-state, Dubai.
“I do not know what they intend to do with me,” she adds.
NBC News did not independently obtain or verify the videos. But a spokesperson for the Free Latifa campaign, a group that has long been demanding her release, confirmed that two of the people behind the ride shared the videos with the British broadcaster.
Neither her father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, nor the UAE authorities responded to the videos.
Latifa accused her father of holding her hostage in Dubai after she was caught in 2018 fleeing the city.
The daring escape attempt drove her to Oman before riding on a yacht on its way to India. From there, she planned to fly to the United States and seek asylum. But after a week, the vessel was intercepted by Indian commandos and Emirati agents who arrested everyone on board. Latifa was eventually returned to Dubai.
Amrati officials had earlier said Latifa’s case was a family affair and that she was not being held.
Her father, who also serves as Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE, is widely welcomed in Western capitals and is pictured with Queen Elizabeth II in the United Kingdom.
However, real campaigners hope that the new videos will not only renew the pressure on the country to release the princess, but that it will also highlight wider abuses in the kingdom that are more often associated with sunny holidays and big business.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, tweeted that Dubai’s’ high rises and reputation on the playground ‘did not include the fact that Mohammed’ locked up his daughter, Princess Latifa, because it wanted to escape control not, must darken. “
The wealthy Gulf nation holds those who criticize authorities in custody and hundreds of activists and academics serve long sentences, in many cases following unfair trials on vague charges, according to Human Rights Watch.
Emirates legislation also discriminates against women, migrants and LGBTQ individuals, the organization says, adding that the families of detained activists are also often harassed by the state security apparatus.
“There is absolutely no freedom of expression,” said Devin Kenney, an Amnesty International Gulf researcher. “You absolutely cannot speak without fear in the UAE.”
Hamad al-Shamsi, a rights activist from the Emirates who was among 94 people accused in 2012 of overthrowing the United Arab Emirates’ government, said the country had managed to use public relations to oust Western lawmakers and withhold the media from highlighting abuses in the country.
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“The UAE is one of the few countries that widely violates human rights and can easily get away with it,” said Al-Shamsi, who lives in Turkey. In 2013, he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in the Gulf nation, he added.
Saudi Arabia’s legal record was ‘no worse’ than the United Arab Emirates, Al-Shamsi said, although there has been a steady stream of coverage of rights violations in the kingdom since the brutal assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
“The difference is in the PR work and lobbying,” al-Shamsi said, adding that programs such as the United Arab Emirates’ recent mission to Mars were part of an effort to “beautify its image in the West, despite the widely documented human rights violations. ‘
Last year, Ivanka Trump was one of the sensational women speaking at a Global Women’s Forum in Dubai attended by Mohammed, even though his daughter was allegedly detained in the same city.
“Western allies have certainly failed to pay any kind of sustained attention to human rights in the country,” said Kenney, of Amnesty International.
In the last months of the Trump administration, officials have been negotiating the largest arms sale ever between the US and the UAE, worth about $ 23.37 billion.
At the time, rights groups called for a halt to the sale, citing, among other things, Emirati links to rights violations in Yemen. Biden’s government has halted arms sales while investigating the deal.
Embassies for the UAE in Washington and London did not immediately respond to a NBC News request for comment, nor did the Dubai Media Office.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Yasmine Salam contributed.