The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently sentenced Bangladeshi migrant workers to long-term – and, in some cases, life – prison sentences for demonstrating against a crackdown on anti-government protesters in Bangladesh. The harsh sentences have renewed criticism of the country’s arbitrary and discriminatory treatment of migrant workers.
Long-term Imprisonment and Deportations
Several dozen Bangladeshi nationals were arrested on 19 July during demonstrations in the UAE to protest against policies of the government in Bangladesh. Al Jazeera reported that three people were given sentences of life imprisonment; 54 others received sentences of up to 11 years. Those who complete their sentences will subsequently be deported. The arrests followed an earlier crackdown on foreign student demonstrations in support of Palestinians on campuses in Abu Dhabi.
According to Al Jazeera, “Unauthorised protests are prohibited in the UAE. The country’s penal code also criminalises offending foreign states or jeopardising ties with them.” The UAE legislation also provides for administrative detention measures and deportation for foreigners violating immigration provisions or posing a risk to national security. Almost 80 percent of the UAE’s population and 90 percent of the labour force are migrants. According to the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladeshi are the third biggest group of expatriates in the country, after Pakistanis and Indians.
The recent demonstrations in the UAE were spurred by nationwide unrest in Bangladesh after student-led protests against the government job quota system and rising unemployment were suppressed with violence. According to reports, over 300 people were injured after groups allegedly linked to the ruling party attacked protesters in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. The protesters were demanding the abolition of the 30 percent quota, which–amid rising unemployment–still reserves a portion of government jobs to children of freedom fighters who fought in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
In a statement provided to the Global Detention Project (GDP), the GDP’s Gulf-based partner Migrant-Rights.org says, “The UAE’s recent mass arrest and harsh sentencing of Bangladeshi nationals peacefully protesting highlights the country’s ongoing suppression of fundamental rights. Despite recent reforms to labour laws, the lack of freedom of expression and assembly severely undermines any progress. These arrests follow a long history of arbitrary detention and deportation of dissidents and asylum seekers –sometimes in collusion with their home country governments –and reflect the systemic injustice of the legal system.”
Persisting Disregard for Migrant Workers’ Rights in the UAE
The GDP and Migrant-Rights.org have worked to bring to light other abuses that migrant workers in the UAE suffer. In a report released last summer, Migrant-Rights.org emphasised how migrant workers in the Gulf are disproportionately impacted by the deadly effects of rising extreme temperatures caused by fossil fuels and climate change. While migrant labourers make up about 90 percent of the UAE workforce, of which approximately 500,000 are construction workers, the report says that the UAE “offers the least protection of any Gulf state, banning work in extreme heat for just 232.5 hours in a year.”
In spring 2023, the GDP released an urgent appeal denouncing the prolonged arbitrary detention of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing Taliban persecution in an emergency evacuation compound in Abu Dhabi. Some 2,500 Afghan refugees remained stranded in a de-facto detention and a legal limbo, awaiting authorisation for resettlement in the US for over one and a half years. Several testimonies revealed cases of sexual assault, medical neglect, ill-treatment, deprivation of liberty, lack of services and education for children and young people, and absence of legal rights, including the right to a judicial review of the decision to detain and the right to appeal.
Migrant workers and non-citizens are routinely subject to a substantial lack of legal rights in the UAE. The Kefala–or sponsorship–system ties migrant workers’ legal status to employers. The GDP previously highlighted that migrant workers cannot access long-term or permanent residency, that aliens can be detained for prolonged periods if they do not hold a valid residence permit, and that “the Ministry of Interior has a wide breadth to deport non-citizens without a court order.” Moreover, detained non-nationals in the UAE frequently face arbitrary arrests, poor conditions in detention and mistreatment within detention facilities, and inability to access information about their cases or to challenge deportation decisions.
Reports of racially motivated arrests, mass arbitrary detention and deportation targeting Black Africans in the summer of 2021 are another example of the extent to which violations of the rights of migrant workers have become standard practice in the UAE. The UN Human Rights Commission expressed concerns over the fact that Federal Law No.6 of 1973 and Federal Law No.2 of 2003–both of which provide for the deportation of foreign nationals on the basis of State Security–do not “allow for deportation orders to be challenged in cases where a person may be subjected to torture or ill-treatment in the receiving country, nor do they provide safeguards against deportation in such circumstances.”
