Dubai Bloggers Walk a Fine Line

Disenchanted bloggers in Dubai fear their days may be numbered as police vow to crackdown on “mischievous elements”.
Dubai Bloggers Walk a Fine Line
7/5/2009
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/Bloger80880716(2).jpg" alt="A journalist looks at the website of Saudi blogger and reform advocate Fouad al-Farhan flashing a banner that reads 'Fouad is Free.' (Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images)" title="A journalist looks at the website of Saudi blogger and reform advocate Fouad al-Farhan flashing a banner that reads 'Fouad is Free.' (Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1827529"/></a>
A journalist looks at the website of Saudi blogger and reform advocate Fouad al-Farhan flashing a banner that reads 'Fouad is Free.' (Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images)

DUBAI—Disenchanted bloggers in Dubai fear their days may be numbered as police vow to crackdown on “mischievous elements”.

In a wide-ranging crackdown on Internet defamation and blackmail, police in Dubai and neighboring emirate of Sharjah have launched dedicated cybercrimes departments.

However, bloggers fear that the campaign could be broadened to clamp down further on online forums on which residents share irreverent thoughts on life in Dubai.

Moderators of online forums in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) already complain that the task keeping politically or religiously sensitive postings off their sites is already a headache.

“It is impossible for webmasters to maintain exactly the tone or content that they might wish,” said a moderator of one hugely popular forum in the UAE.

“When people cause trouble, the moderators are kept busy. They monitor the forum all day, every day.”

Police in Dubai and Sharjah have noted an increase in the number of complaints against individuals who use blog sites to defame others.

Dubai Police were quoted as saying there were 300 cases of slander in 2008, compared to 170 in 2007, and just 70 in 2006.

One senior Dubai police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Epoch Times that “mischievous elements” would be increasingly targeted.

Action against blog owners varies. Police have vowed to trace the ISPs of those accused of blackmail and malicious slander and prosecute.

Currently, Web sites and forums critical of UAE’s ruling families are often blocked by the country’s Internet regulator—the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA).

The TRA publishes a list of eight categories of banned material, including pornography, defamation of Islam and matter that could damage the social order.

Certain sites—such as the blog Secret Dubai—are banned, while others, including the equally critical Fake Plastic Souks, are accessible.

Blog owners claim that the red lines delimiting what is and is not acceptable are not clear. The blog owner, who declined to be named, said that he had been forced to remove content without knowing whether or not he had broken any laws.

“When you receive personal threats, and have no recourse through unions, or no real protection as a journalist, so what else can you do?” he said. “We’re a blog, we don’t have the might of a big company.”