The United Arab Emirates planned for 2019 to be its „Year of Tolerance,“ marked by a slew of progressive initiatives across schools and governments.

But any gains from the project at home were overshadowed by a series of blunders, many of which were defined by their intolerance.

From the escape of Princess Haya, the Emir of Dubai’s wife fearing for her safety, to a national gender balance awards where men won all the awards, here’s how it went wrong for the UAE in 2019.

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The United Arab Emirates hoped that 2019 would be remembered as its „Year of Tolerance.“

Despite being a relatively conservative nation, in a region not known for openness, its president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed had the confidence to put tolerance front and center at a launch event in December 2018.

Sheikh Khalifa’s plan had five targets, which focused on informing citizens about diversity and religious freedom as well as doing more as a government to modernize.

The plan was huge and visible project inside the UAE.

Dubai’s government-owned Emirates airline covered a plane in „Year of Tolerance“ branding. Year of Tolerance-themed Christmas trees went up in December in Abu Dhabi, and in Dubai, the Year of Tolerance bridge became a tourist attraction.

But the UAE was the subject of a series of high-profile, negative news stories in 2019, the impact of which has eclipsed any benefits garnered from the project at home.

The escape in July of Princess Haya, the wife of Emirati Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed, brought the Emirates‘ poor rights record into the spotlight.

Events like the building of Dubai’s first Hindu temple, and the first-ever visit by a Pope to the country in February, seemed hollow alongside a crackdown on dissidents and activists and the breaking of an UN arms embargo.

Here’s where it went wrong.

January: UN demands release of Emirati rights defender Ahmed Mansoor

Foto: The now-incarcerated Emirati human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor in 2015.sourceMartin Ennals Award/YouTube

Human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor was sentenced to 10 years in jail and given a million-dirham ($272,000) fine for criticizing the government in 2017.

In 2019, the UAE was criticised by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for his continued detention.

It urged the UAE „to promptly and unconditionally release Mansoor and to ensure that individuals are not penalized for expressing views critical of the Government or its allies.“

Mansoor is one of dozens of state critics forcibly disappeared, silenced, or currently imprisoned in the UAE. Freedom House regard the UAE as having „one of the most restrictive press laws in the Arab world.“

In April 2019, Mansoor went on a hunger strike to protest an unfair trial and the conditions in which he is detained. At time of publication, Mansoor is still in jail.

Source: UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

January: Men take all the prizes at Dubai’s „gender balance“ awards

Foto: Dubai’s 2019 ‚gender balance‘ awards.sourceDubai Media Office

In early January, the government of Dubai held its annual „gender balance“ awards, and men walked away with every trophy.

The irony was not lost on western media. The BBC, Washington Post, New York Times, and Guardian were amongst news outlets to publish criticism of the results.

When asked by Business Insider about the lack of female prize winners at the time, the Dubai Gender Balance Council said: „During the Index’s second edition, recipients of the Index’s awards happened to be entities led by men.“

„This is indicative of the great and extraordinary progress we have made as a nation, where men in the UAE are proactively working alongside women to champion gender balance as a national priority.“

Despite the public backlash, the United Arab Emirates is actually one of the leaders in the Middle East for gender balance, according to UN Human Development Reports.

Source: Business Insider

January: British man beaten for wearing Qatar football shirt and locked up

Foto: Ali Issa Ahmad.source(Screengrab/Sky News)

In January, Emirati security personnel attacked British-Sudanese security guard Ali Issa Ahmad for wearing a Qatari jersey to a soccer match in the UAE, according to rights campaigners Detained in Dubai.

Ahmad reported the incident to local authorities, but they accused him of faking his injuries, and arrested him.

It is illegal to show sympathy for Qatar in the UAE, as the countries are embroiled in a political dispute over Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism and Iran.

The UAE attorney general said in June 2017 that anyone expressing pro-Qatar sentiments would face up to 15 years in prison and a fine of at least 500,000 dirhams ($136,000.)

The UAE maintains that Ahmad was put behind bars because he „wasted police time,“ the Guardian reported at the time.

When he was allowed to return to the UK in February, he told the Guardian that he was stabbed, punched, and deprived of food and water for days at a time while in jail.

„I thought 100% that I was going to die in the UAE,“ he said.

Source: Guardian

January: UAE found to have hacked phones of government critics

Foto: Reuters found the UAE hacked into dissidents iPhones using a tool called Karma.sourceReuters/Phil Noble

Also in January, an investigation by Reuters found that the UAE was working with a group of US intelligence experts to „engage in surveillance of other governments, militants and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.“

The team which helped the UAE was called Project Raven.

Emirati authorities monitored dissidents with Karma, a hi-tech tool to access data on iPhones which doesn’t require the owner to click on a link to deploy it.

Ex-Project Raven operatives told Reuters that Karma could remotely grant access to iPhones simply by uploading phone numbers or email accounts into an automated targeting system.

In the years since the Arab Spring, the UAE has cracked down on dissidents and activists who criticize the government online, locking up dozens over the last decade.

Source: Reuters

March: Woman arrested for 2016 Facebook post calling her ex-husband’s new wife „a horse“

Foto: Laleh Shahravesh and her daughter were detained in Dubai because of Facebook comments she made in 2016.source(Detained in Dubai)

In March, western media jumped on the story that a British mother was arrested in Dubai for calling her ex-husband’s new wife a „horse“ on Facebook in 2016.

Laleh Shahravresh and her teenage daughter were detained when they flew to the Dubai to attend her the funeral of her former partner, who lived in Dubai.

Authorities cited the country’s strict cyber crime laws against online harassment, and threatened her with two years in jail and a $65,000 fine.

The single mother used up all her savings while she waited for her trial in a Dubai hotel room, and was finally freed in mid-April after paying an $800 fine.

Radha Stirling, the CEO of rights group Detained in Dubai, said the case set a dangerous precedent.

„Anyone exercising their freedom of speech, who lives in, visits, or indeed, who may ever step foot in the UAE is at risk,“ she said in a statement.

Source: Insider

July: The escape of Princess Haya, wife of the Emir of Dubai

Foto: Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, the wife of Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum, leaves the Royal Courts of Justice with her lawyer Baroness Fiona Shackleton, in London, July 31, 2019.sourceReuters

In July, the wife of Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed, Princess Haya, fled the UAE for London.

She reportedly bolted with her two children after learning worrying details of the 2018 disappearance of Sheikha Latifa, one of her husband’s 21 other children.

Princess Haya’s case garnered huge media coverage, and brought Sheikha Latifa’s story back into the conversation.

Sheikha Latifa tried to escape her stifling life in Dubai in March 2018.

She fled on a yacht, skippered by a French ex-spy, but she was captured off the Indian coast two weeks later, and returned to Dubai.

She is now locked away, according to campaigners. She hasn’t been seen in public since.

The event was a PR disaster for Dubai. As Financial Times editor-designate Roula Khalaf wrote in March this year, Latifa’s escape „made more headlines across the world than any business deal struck in the city.“

Source: Business Insider

August: UAE honors Indian leader, despite brutal annexation of Kashmir

Foto: Members of Youth Forum for Kashmir chant anti India slogans during a demonstration to mark International Human Rights Day, in Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019.sourceAP/K.M. Chaudary

In August, the UAE announced it was to give Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi its highest civilian honour, the „Order of Zayed.“

That month, Modi’s government had rescinded 70 years of autonomy for the area of Kashmir in August, cutting off access to the internet, cracking down on protests, and carrying out mass detentions of mainstream political figures.

As with the decision to ignore the oppression of Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, Gulf states have stayed silent over the fate of the many hundreds of thousands of Muslims who call Kashmir home.

The UAE has actively distanced itself from the crisis, calling it „an internal matter.“

The Associated Press pointed out in August that the Gulf region has around $100 billion in annual trade with India.

„Human rights have been discarded in favour of economic opportunities,“ Samah Hadid, a Beirut-based human rights advocate, told al-Jazeera.

November: UAE accused of supplying Libya with arms in violation of sanctions

Foto: Fighters loyal to Libya’s UN-backed government (GNA) hold RPGs during clashes with forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar at the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya May 25, 2019.sourceGoran Tomasevic/Reuters

The UAE was accused of smuggling military equipment to Libyan warlord Khalifa Hifter by the UN Security Council in November.

The UN said the UAE therefore violated an UN arms embargo, along with Jordan and Turkey, and „routinely and sometimes blatantly supplied weapons with little effort to disguise the source.“

The emirate of Abu Dhabi was specifically named as the prime suspect in the investigation into the deadly bombing on a migrant shelter in Libya, which the UN Commission for Human Rights said may be a war crime.

53 migrants died and 130 people were injured.

Source: Guardian, BBC