Amnesty Int’l Decries Arbitrary Detention, Deportation of Africans in UAE

Amnesty International has decried mass arbitrary detention and deportation of Africans in the United Arab Emirates.

A statement by Ghina Bou Chacra of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Regional office, on Monday, brought out some of the cases.

According to the statement, “On the night of 24-25 June 2021, police in Abu Dhabi broke into the homes of hundreds of migrant workers as they slept, targeting Black Africans in racially motivated arrests, detained them for weeks in al-Wathba prison and subsequently deported them without due process.

“While in detention, the authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) subjected them to inhuman and degrading treatment and stripped them of nearly all their belongings.

“Amnesty International spoke to 18 victims of these raids and deportations, (11 Cameroonians, five Nigerians, one Ugandan, and one Ghanaian, in total eight women and ten men) in September 2021.

“All 18 deportees said that the raids had targeted Black Africans in that the hundreds taken from their flats and held in al-Wathba with them were almost exclusively Black, and that the few Asian nationals arrested with them were taken because they happened to be living in the same flats as Africans.”