25 August 2015 – Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) strongly condemns the arrest of Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, an Emirati economics professor and prominent academic. UAE state security forces arrested bin Ghaith on 18 August, reportedly in relation to his recent tweets about Egypt. A week after the arrest, the government[…]
Since clinching its 2022 World Cup bid, Qatar has faced heightened international scrutiny. As workers have broken ground on elaborate new facilities for the tournament, human rights defenders have pointed to the country’s abusive kafala sponsorship system and the horrible conditions under which migrant laborers work. Yet Qatar engaged in human rights abuses long before its[…]
Saudi women have begun registering to vote for December’s municipal elections, a development that the international press has greeted with extensive, and mostly positive, coverage. Yet, while the Saudi government welcomes glowing descriptions of its slow yet steady progress in advancing women’s rights, its actual reforms remain superficial. Saudi authorities are doing everything within their[…]
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB), and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) express concern over the recent arrest of Sheikh Hasan Isa, a prominent member of the opposition political group al-Wefaq National Islamic Society. His arrest is the latest in a series[…]
Although the UAE is rarely mentioned in relation to the Arab Spring, Emiratis did not remain silent in 2011. A group of activists petitioned the president to call for democracy, an elected parliamentary body, and legislative powers for the Federal National Council. A majority of the petitioners belonged to an Islamist organization called al-Islah, which[…]