As bestselling authors from Jung Chang to Bernardine Evaristo prepare to gather in Abu Dhabi for the first Hay festival in the United Arab Emirates, leading figures have spoken out against the country’s compromised free speech. Stephen Fry - the festival’s president – has joined more than 40 public figures and organisations castigating its government for “promoting a platform for freedom of expression, while keeping behind bars Emirati citizens and residents who shared their own views and opinions”.

An open letter signed by Fry, Noam Chomsky, and a coalition of more than 40 NGOs including Amnesty and PEN International, is calling on the UAE to use the launch of the festival’s Abu Dhabi branch – which opens on Tuesday – to “demonstrate their respect for the right to freedom of expression by freeing all human rights defenders imprisoned for expressing themselves peacefully online”.

The letter points out the disconnect behind the support shown for the festival by the UAE’s ministry of tolerance “in a country that does not tolerate dissenting voices”.

“Regrettably, the UAE government devotes more effort to concealing its human rights abuses than to addressing them and invests heavily in the funding and sponsorship of institutions, events and initiatives that are aimed at projecting a favourable image to the outside world,” it says.

The authors and academics also emphasise their support for festival participants who decide to speak out against the UAE government’s actions during their visits.

There has long been a strain between the UAE government and its human rights record, and the international cultural events held there. In 2018, authors including Antony Beevor and Frank Gardner pulled out of the Emirates Airlines festival of literature following the jailing of the British academic Matthew Hedges. The former UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson pulled out the following year after an open letter, signed by authors including Fry, MPs and campaign groups, called for the release of the jailed Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor. Mansoor is serving a 10-year prison sentence after being convicted of “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols including its leaders” over his human rights campaigning. Mansoor is currently being held in solitary confinement, with no bed or books, and has only once been allowed outside for fresh air.

With authors set to appear at Hay festival Abu Dhabi including Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, a major advocate for human rights who has spoken out repeatedly against oppression, festival director Peter Florence said “no subjects are off the table” in Abu Dhabi.

“Engagement is important to us. In Abu Dhabi, as in our other festivals, writers will host conversations and ask questions touching on the biggest issues of our times, including these questions of free speech. The programme is focused on Arabic-language writers, including many of our Beirut 39 novelists and poets, alongside anglophone and francophone writers who are writing about the Arab world,” said Florence.

A spokeswoman for the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, a signatory to the letter, said the organisation decided not to ask authors to boycott Hay festival Abu Dhabi because the event could spotlight abuses.A spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE, another signatory, said the festival could provide “a good platform for free expression in a country where even posting the wrong tweet can land you in jail”.

“It is a rare opportunity to draw attention to the UAE’s systematic human rights violations [in situ] where, hopefully, the impact is the biggest,” she said. “It is important to note that the Hay festival is a private event - as opposed to the sham Tolerance Summit or the Emirates Airlines literature festival, which are solely designed to project a favourable image to the outside world. We did mention in our letter, however, that Hay Abu Dhabi is sponsored by the so-called ministry of tolerance, which we consider problematic and which we sincerely hope won’t undermine Hay’s integrity.”

The letter comes just as Sharjah, an emirate in the UAE, is set to be guest of honour at the London book fair in March, a decision that has raised eyebrows among some in the book world. All previous choices for the fair’s “market focus” have been a whole country or multiple countries, and never a single region.

In addition to Mansoor, the Hay letter also highlights cases including human rights lawyers Dr Mohammed Al-Roken and Dr Mohammed Al-Mansoori, both of whom have been detained since July 2012 serving 10-year sentences. Al-Roken had devoted his career to providing legal assistance to victims of human rights violations in the UAE.

“With the world’s eyes on the Hay festival Abu Dhabi, we urge the Emirati government to consider using this opportunity to unconditionally release our jailed friends and colleagues, and in the interim, to at least allow prisoners of conscience to receive books and reading materials, to have regular visits with family, to be allowed outside their isolation cells to visit the canteen or go outside in the sun,” the letter reads, saying that such a move would “demonstrate that the Hay festival is an opportunity to back up [the UAE ’s] promise of tolerance”.

• This article was amended on 27 February 2020. It previously said that LBF had selected the city of Sharjah as its market focus when it is the emirate of Sharjah.