KeepEyesOnSudan #SanctionUAE

United Arab Emirates (#UAE) crime of equipping and backing the Rapid Support Forces (#RSF)militia in its systematic chain of atrocities and crimes against Sudanese people, as exposed by the UN panel of experts on Darfur’s report earlier this year, is neither the first nor the only. The UAE used its non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council, which it held from January 2022 to December 2023, in the worst imaginable way in order to deflect criticism away from its violations of UN resolutions and to exact revenge on the expert committee investigators who helped to expose these violations. It even went so far as to completely sabotage these committees and panels’ work.

For example, in July 2022, Dubai Airport authorities detained Dinesh Mahtani @DinoMahtani (British national) and interrogated him for several hours before preventing him from completing his flight, citing security reasons. Later, the British authorities confirmed that there were no police reports or crimes regarding Mahtani, and it became clear that the matter was related to his participation in the United Nations panel of experts to monitor sanctions on the Somali Al-Shabaab group in 2013-2014. He and his team revealed 161 commercial coal shipments from Somalia, most of which were heading to Port Rashid in UAE. These activities were used to finance the Al-Shabaab terrorist group, including 1.6 million bags of coal that were unloaded in the UAE. This is a violation of the Security Council resolution to impose a ban on the export or import of Somali charcoal due to its role in financing the activities of Al-Shabaab. It was revealed in a recent report from the relevant United Nations panel of experts that these activities are still ongoing until at least 2022.

This bullying not only showed that the UAE disregard for the international legitimacy resolutions, but it also showed that the UAE’s claims about fighting political Islam aren’t true. The UAE is now using these claims to support the Rapid Support Forces militia in its war in Sudan, even though it doesn’t mind supporting the terrorist group Al-Shabaab!

This incident was not the only bullying in the UAE’s record. Because members of the Security Council have the power to prevent any individual from working in committees of experts and investigations, without the need to provide any justifications, UAE stopped the procedures for selecting and appointing a number of investigators to UN committees of experts who previously referred to the violations and crimes of Emirates. In 2022, the UAE blocked the selection of the investigative journalist Maggie Michael @mokhbersahafi, who previously won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and who is currently a correspondent for Reuters, as a regional expert in a UN committee dealing with Yemen. This was in retaliation to a number of articles and investigations through which Maggie exposed the existence of secret detention centers run by the UAE in Yemen, where detainees are subjected to torture and sexual assaults, which were published by the Associated Press in June 2017. Recently, Maggie also revealed horrific details of what civilians were subjected to in Darfur at the hands of the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces militia. 

Also, in November 2022, UAE prevented the appointment of Canadian researcher Shawn Blore, who had previously written detailed research on the illicit gold trade in the United Arab Emirates, from working as a UN expert in a committee working to scrutinize mineral exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Blore had participated in writing the Carnegie Center for Peace report entitled “Dubai’s Role in Facilitating Corruption and Illicit Global Financial Flows,” which was published in 2020. Blore addressed the UAE’s operations in illicitly smuggling gold mainly from Sudan and the Congo, and to a lesser extent Central Africa. And the coastal region in general.

The UAE follows a similar usual pattern to what occurred to Mahtani in that it bans the entry of human rights campaigners, especially those who advocate workers’ rights. Despite his arrival at the airport in 2015 in his capacity as a representative of Amnesty International, James Lynch was denied entry to the Emirates without providing any explanation.
 
The UAE is leveraging its growing diplomatic power and economic strength to shield itself from the repercussions of its questionable dark actions, such as fueling war in Sudan, Libya, and Yemen, as well as engaging in facilitating and backing violations and atrocities carried out by its proxies, along with engaging in illicit financial transactions, money laundering, and buying influence. The UAE is not only implicated in the destruction of Sudan and the displacement of its people but also is orchestrating the most extensive aggression and criminal operation of our contemporary times.