|
The Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), founded in 2008, is a Norway-based organisation with consultative status at the United Nations. It is recognised by the EU and registered for lobbying purposes at the European Parliament in Brussels. It also has a cooperation agreement with the African Union and has acted as an official observer for elections in several Arab and African countries.
GNRD boasts of using "out of the ordinary and unique approaches" to achieve its goals, and it is certainly an odd organisation.
- Its founder/president, Loai Deeb, previously ran a fake university from his home in Norway.
- Its grandly-titled High Commissioner for Europe, Anne-Marie Lizin, has a conviction for electoral malpractice in Belgium.
- It adopts an unusually favourable view of human rights in the United Arab Emirates.
- It has links with the Church of Scientology.
- Unlike most human rights organisations, it has some particularly nasty and abusive supporters.
I have written about GNRD in numerous blog posts over several months. For the convenience of readers I have now compiled them all into a single file (below), arranged in chronological order:
===============
=============
GNRD appears to be active in and around various UN forums and is also registered with the European Parliament for lobbying purposes (fifteen of its staff have official accreditation). According to a recent statement on GNRD's website, it "has fought zealously, both in Brussels and at the United Nations, to improve workers' rights in Qatar, and eliminate forced labour through the sponsorship system".
==============
Emirati connections
GNRD itself is an obscure but well-funded organisation (to the tune of 3.5 million euros a year) and has offices in Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Sudan, Jordan and the UAE. It appears to be active in and around various UN forums and is also registered with the European Parliament for lobbying purposes (fifteen of its staff have official accreditation).
GNRD says most of its funding comes from donations, though the sources of money are far from transparent. On its website, at the bottom of the home page, GNRD has a section headed "Our collaborators and sponsors" with a collection of sixteen logos, some of which are illegible. It is unclear which of these actually donate money but the website says GNRD's "main sponsor" is the GNRD Foundation. In other words, GNRD seems to be sponsoring itself.
The GNRD Foundation (registered in Norway late last year) is a new sponsor on the website and replaces a previous sponsor, Deeb Consulting – an Emirates-based company owned by Loai Deeb.
GNRD has good connections with the UAE, which is one of the Gulf states bankrolling the Sisi regime in Egypt. GNRD is particularly fortunate to have an office in the UAE, since civil society organisations are not generally welcomed by the authorities there. All associations and NGOs in the UAE have to register with the Ministry of Social Affairs and, according to the US State Department, they have to follow the government’s censorship guidelines and receive prior government approval before publishing any material.
In 2012, Emirati authorities abruptly closed the Dubai office of the National Democratic Institute (an American NGO) and two of its staff were briefly detained. On the same day, the polling organisation Gallup and the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation also closed their offices in Abu Dhabi – apparently at the government's behest.
GNRD produces an international league table of human rights and the most recent one (rather incredibly) ranked the UAE in 14th position worldwide – just one place behind the UK and far ahead of any other Arab country. Following criticism in social media, that league table has now been deleted, though another one is promised in 92 days.
Articles on GNRD's website also portray the UAE's human rights record in a highly positive light. One article comments favourably on the role of women in the UAE. Others talk about the UAE's "achievements in the field of promoting and protecting the family and its members", also praising the UAE for its environmental efforts, and for the way it cares for the disabled and protects the rights of children.
This glowing picture is not one that many others share. The US State Department and Human Rights Watch, for instance, have both been far more critical of the UAE's rights record.
Last August, during a political spat between the UAE and Qatar, Qatar arrested two British men who had gone there on behalf of GNRD to investigate the conditions of Nepalese migrant workers. The pair were eventually released without charges but their report on migrant workers has so far not been published.
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Britons
==========
Mansoor Lootah: attacked Human Rights Watch
Mystery group defends UAE's rights record
Vitriolic response to criticisms
21 Feb 2015: Human Rights Watch has recently come under attack from a mysterious Swiss-based organisation objecting to a section of its annual World Report which discusses the United Arab Emirates.
Summarising the human rights situation in the Emirates, HRW's report said:
"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) continued in 2014 to arbitrarily detain individuals it perceives as posing a threat to national security, and its security forces continued to face allegations that they torture detainees in pretrial detention.
"UAE courts invoked repressive laws to prosecute government critics, and a new counterterrorism law poses a further threat to government critics and rights activists.
"Migrant construction workers on one of the country’s most high-profile projects continued to face serious exploitation, and female domestic workers were still excluded from regulations that apply to workers in other sectors."
This prompted a vitriolic response from the International Gulf Organization (IGO) which describes itself as a "non-governmental organisation dedicated to implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at regional and international levels".
In a denunciation posted on IGO's website, the organisation's chairman, Mansoor Lootah, accused Human Rights Watch of "targeting" the UAE. The article continued:
"He [Lootah] equally pointed out that this targeting has its motives and grounds on the organisation’s side and that they are selfish and far away from the lofty human values founded by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and as enshrined by the International Bill of Rights and Freedoms.
"The Human Rights Watch Report specifically for this year, is a drastic violation of those rights and freedoms with its allegations, defects and contradictions which makes clear the goals, rationales and its value and considerations of rights which the Report failed to mention..
"This also greatly influenced the Report’s credibility and reliability, especially in some aspects with which the Report has dealt shamefully with no justification, appreciation or respect of the public awareness, and without observing any limits of integrity, fairness and credibility."
Besides appearing on IGO's website, the article was also circulated by WAM, the UAE government's news agency, and published or summarised by at least two Emirati newspapers, the Khaleej Times and The National.
It's interesting that Emirati media think the International Gulf Organization is credible enough to be worth quoting, since it is a very peculiar NGO (if, in fact, it really is an NGO). Its website gives no postal address and no phone number, and a web page purportedly listing its board of directors is entirely blank. Unlike most NGOs, its website doesn't invite donations from the public. There is, however, a place on the website where people can apply to become a member of IGO, but it's not very inviting: you have to provide a copy of your CV and explain why you want to join.
Although IGO claims to be an international organisation with headquarters in Geneva, it seems to be mainly interested in fending off complaints about the UAE's human rights record.
In 2013 it produced a documentary film about the controversial trial of 94 Islamists accused of conspiracy in the UAE. The film challenged claims that the trial was unfair and the UAE's government-run National Media Council helpfully organised a special showing of it for journalists.
IGO claimed to have financed the film itself, without government support. Bloomberg reported at the time:
"Robert Resto, IGO’s marketing and media manager, declined to say how the group, which he described as a not-for-profit and non-government group, is funded."
Last year IGO produced a 13-page report on legislation in the GCC countries relating to domestic workers.
Although the report was not uncritical of Gulf states' performance in this area, the Migrant Rights organisation accused it of misrepresenting the situation faced by domestic workers and regurgitating government talking points without substantive analysis.
Earlier this week, IGO signed an agreement with the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights which (according to IGO) will "enable the two bodies to work more effectively to protect and boost the respect for human rights, and to spread the culture of human rights and develop the legislations and practices related to human rights in the Arab world".
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Mystery
=================
The price of criticising the UAE
Online vilification continues
26 Feb 2015: As regular readers will know, some odd things have been happening since I raised questions about the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), an organisation registered in Norway which has links to the United Arab Emirates and takes an unusually favourable view of the UAE's human rights performance.
I have also raised questions about another Emirati-linked "human rights" group, the Swiss-based International Gulf Organization (IGO), which earlier this month attacked Human Rights Watch over its criticisms of the UAE.
It was a couple of days after my most recent blog post about GNRD that the weird things began. The details are here and here but, just to recap:
Someone created a fake Facebook profile using my name and photograph.
My own Facebook account was suspended after someone complained that I was using a false name.
Someone attempted to hack into my Twitter account.
A Twitter account called @Media_intel began making false claims about me. One of its tweets said I was being paid $50,000 a year by Qatar; another said I had been expelled from Yemen for a sexual offence.
The claims were then retweeted by hundreds of fake Twitter accounts.
Interestingly, these same fake accounts had been used earlier to mass-tweet links to a speech by Loai Deeb, the president of GNRD. This leads me to believe that whoever organised or paid for the promotion of Deeb's speech through fake accounts also organised or paid for the retweeting of @Media_intel's claims.
Now for a brief update.
Someone has set up a fake Twitter account in my name (@BrianWhitak). This hasn't been very active so far but it includes some tweets copied from my real Twitter account (@Brian_Whit).
During a periodic check of the statistics for my website I found there had been 52,300 page views last Friday and 27,638 on Saturday. As far as I'm aware, both these figures are far higher than I have ever had before on a single day. Daily traffic to the website is usually in the range of 3,000-4,000 page views and doesn't fluctuate much. I can't see any explanation for this surge in traffic except, perhaps, as an attempt to crash the website.
Several new Twitter accounts have begun posting about my imagined connection with Qatar
I have also received emails thanking me for subscribing to websites that I haven't subscribed to.
One was a dating website; the other was bayt.com, a job-search website. Someone has created a fake profile/CV at bayt.com which uses my photograph (below) and says I am looking for employment in Qatar. -
i was particularly intrigued by the photograph of myself. It has appeared only a handful of times on the internet and I don't recall when or where it was taken, but I do remember the last time I saw it.
The same picture was used in a Tweet by @emarati001 in 2012 when I was still working at the Guardian and the paper came under attack from the UAE:
The photograph also figured in a Twitter campaign (accompanied by a YouTube video) under the hashtag #uk_supports_traitors:
The main cause of the 2012 campaign against the Guardian was an article by Said Nasser al-Teniji, an Emirati Islamist, published on the paper's website. The online abuse was directed mainly against me and Ian Black, the Guardian's Middle East editor, even though neither of us had played any part in the publication of Teniji's article.
Ian Black referred to this later in a Guardian article about
the UAE's sensitivies:
"The Emirati authorities ... do not take negative publicity lying down. A recent comment piece in the Guardian by an Islah activist has attracted particular venom. The fightback in Abu Dhabi has been fast and abusive. Under a Twitter hashtag #UK_supports_traitors the Guardian and BBC have been accused of being in the pay of the Qataris; knowledge of Arabic is produced as evidence of involvement in 'espionage'. Harassed foreign office diplomats are being forced to explain that the British government does not control the British press.
"But the campaign is wider than that. The UAE has been lobbying hard in both Washington and London against their 'honeymoon' with the new regimes of the Arab spring, with special emphasis on Egypt. It is perhaps over-stating the case to call this effort a Gulf 'counter-revolution' but the Cold War notion of 'containment' certainly fits the bill."
If I were to ask Emirati officials about this online harassment I'm sure they would deny it has anything to do with their government. They would probably attribute it to over-zealous Emirati citizens who feel slighted by criticism of their country.
What puzzles me, though, is why Emiratis specifically would indulge in such crude behaviour. I have probably said critical things about every country in the Middle East at some time or other and the reactions have been varied, but I have seen nothing from other countries in the region quite like this.
===============
http://www.al-bab.com/blog/blog-images/Lizin.jpg
GNRD's 'High Commissioner' sentenced
Another blow for UAE-linked organisation
8 March 2015: Last week brought more embarrassment for the UAE-linked Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) following the revelation a few months ago that its founder/president had previously run a fake university in Norway. On Thursday, a court in Belgium gave GNRD's extravagantly-titled "High Commissioner for Europe" a suspended prison sentence and banned her from public office for five years.
The "High Commissioner" is Anne-Marie Lizin, a veteran Belgian politician whose GNRD duties include overseeing GNRD-W, a newly-established department concerned with the rights of women and girls.
Anne-Marie Lizin: five-year suspension from
public office. Photo: Guy Goossens
In her political career Lizin served three years as president of the Belgian senate and is currently its honorary president but the criminal case relates to her time as mayor in the historic town of Huy – and the use of municipal employees (who in any case ought to be politically neutral) for distributing election literature on her behalf.
The arrangement was that employees who canvassed for Lizin during working hours would not have any pay deducted or be required to make up the lost time. This meant the municipality, in effect, would be subsidising Lizin's campaign.
Last Thursday, an appeal court in Liege confirmed the sentence imposed earlier on Lizin by a lower court. Lizin is planning a further appeal – to Belgium's Supreme Court – and the ban on holding public office will not take effect until all legal avenues have been exhausted.
Lizin, who was expelled from the Socialist Party in 2009, clung to her mayoral post in Huy for 26 years and left it acrimoniously. Having been forced to resign amid a series of scandals, she then got into a dispute with the new mayor, Micheline Toussaint, about parking spaces behind the Town Hall which resulted in Lizin ramming Toussaint's car (reports here and here).
Belgian media also reported that after leaving office Lizin had retained a mobile phone provided by the municipality. This only came to light when the municipality received a 5,000 euros bill which Lizin reportedly agreed to pay after being threatened with legal action.
Next Tuesday, Lizin is due to speak at a GNRD event in Geneva, held on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council. According to the blurb, this will focus on the outcomes of a conference about human rights and counter-terrorism which GNRD held in Geneva last month (and which I discussed in an earlier blog post).
GNRD's invitation to next Tuesday's event
Lizin also spoke at the February conference and the text of her speech (in French) is here. She writes frequently about her GNRD activities on her website.
Continuing harassment
Following a previous blog post about GNRD and another about the International Gulf Organization, a "human rights" group that appears to be a front for the Emirati government, supporters of GNRD and the UAE launched a campaign of online harassment directed against me:
Someone created a fake Facebook profile using my name and photograph.
My own Facebook account was suspended after someone complained that I was using a false name.
Someone attempted to hack into my Twitter account.
A Twitter account called @Media_intel began making false claims about me. One of its tweets said I was being paid $50,000 a year by Qatar; another said I had been expelled from Yemen for a sexual offence.
The claims were then retweeted by hundreds of fake Twitter accounts which had previously been used to advertise a speech by GNRD's founder/president, Loai Deeb.
For more details of this harassment, see my earlier blog post.
Last week there was a further attempt to hack my Facebook account and my Twitter feed continues to be spammed by tweets from fake accounts.
This might seem a very strange way for supporters of a human rights organisation to behave, but GNRD does say on its website that it "uses out of the ordinary and unique approaches" in its work.
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Mystery
=================
Critics of UAE face new harassment
Who hired the private investigator?
28 March 2015: Two Americans who publicly criticised the exploitation of migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates have found themselves under investigation by a private detective, the New York Times reports.
A private investigator called Loren Berger has been making inquiries about Andrew Ross, a professor at New York University (NYU), and Ariel Kaminer, a journalist who formerly worked for the New York Times – reportedly in the hope of finding people who would say negative things about them.
Earlier this month Ross was refused admission to the Emirates, where NYU has a campus. Ross, who has frequently criticised the university's arrangement with the UAE, had been planning to continue his research into labour conditions there.
Kaminer reported critically on UAE labour conditions in an article for the New York Times which was published last May.
Sea O'Driscoll, a freelance reporter who worked with Kaminer on the article, has since told the New York Times that he was offered "generous payments and immunity from prosecution if he would write favorably about the [UAE] government". He said he had refused and had not been permitted to re-enter the country after leaving for a short period, the paper added.
When contacted by the New York Times, Berger – the detective – said: "I can't tell you who I’m working for ... I don't know who the client is. It's not unusual." The NYT's report continues:
On January 29, Ms. Berger called Susan Fraiman, a professor of English at the University of Virginia. Professor Fraiman had written critically about some of Professor Ross’s academic work.
Ms Berger “said something like, ‘We’re looking for people to comment negatively,’ ” Professor Fraiman recalled in an interview. “I told her that I don’t know him personally. It seemed odd.”
She said that she had asked about the context of the investigation, and that Ms Berger had told her the president of NYU was under fire over the university’s involvement in the Emirates.
As Professor Fraiman recalled the conversation, “She said: ‘We’re investigating Andrew Ross for his comments about this and a particular journalist, Ariel Kaminer, who wrote about it. By the way, do you know her?’ ”
Both Professor Fraiman and Ms. Kaminer attended Princeton University, but at different times; both said they did not know each other.
New York University has issued a statement saying it has no knowledge of Berger's investigation and no involvement in it. “It’s reprehensible and offensive on its face, and we call on whoever is involved to desist immediately.”
Asked by the New York Times if the UAE also condemns the surveillance or can cast any light on it, a spokeswoman for the Emirates embassy in Washington did not respond. The paper notes that the UAE government "has a record of striking back at those critical of migrant labour conditions there".
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been facing persistent online harassment as a result of articles I wrote about two strange "human rights" organisations which have links to the UAE.
One was the International Gulf Organization (IGO), based in Switzerland, which describes itself as a "non-governmental organisation dedicated to implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at regional and international levels". Last month IGO published a vitriolic attack on Human Rights Watch which it accused of "targeting" the UAE in its annual World Report.
The other organisation is the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), based in Norway, which also has links to the UAE and promotes an unusually favourable view of human rights there.
The harassment, which began in mid-February and was still continuing yesterday, has included repeated attempts to hack my Twitter and Facebook accounts, the creation of fake online profiles using my name or photograph, and the use of hundreds of fake Twitter accounts to post false and defamatory allegations about me.
These include claims that I am paid $50,000 a year by the government of Qatar and that I am evading tax.
A video posted anonymously on YouTube claims that I was in Yemen during the uprising against the Saleh regime (which I was not) and induced a Yemeni man to have sex with me by offering him money and a job and Qatar.
The latest effort is a blog called "Brian Whitaker owns fake companies", where an article purportedly written by someone called Adam L Conner claims:
"In 2007, Brian was made redundant from The Guardian because of his bias articles that favoured Qatar’s position on issues in the Middle East."
In fact, I left the Guardian in 2012 – five years later – for reasons that were unconnected with anything I had ever written about Qatar. As evidence of my supposed support for Qatar, Conner cites one of my blog posts which criticised Sheikha Moza, wife of the former emir. Bizarrely, Conner claims the article "had a clear intention of glamourising the Qatari royal family".
There is also a new Wikipedia Arabic page titled "Brian Whitaker, Reporting for Qatar", though as yet it has no content.
I made a formal complaint that Conner's blog posts were defamatory and received an email from Google saying that if I wanted them removed I would have to get a court order. The email continued:
"Blogger hosts third-party content. It is not a creator or mediator of that content. We encourage you to resolve any disputes directly with the individual who posted the content.
"If you cannot reach an agreement and choose to pursue legal action against the individual who posted the content, and that action results in a judicial determination that the material is illegal or should be removed, please send us the court order seeking removal.
"In cases where the individual who posted the content is anonymous [as in this case], we may provide you with user information pursuant to a valid third party subpoena or other appropriate legal process against Google Inc."
The same fake Twitter accounts posting defamatory allegations about me are also being used to promote the work of GNRD and its founder-president, Loai Deeb, a lawyer of Palestinian origin who previously ran a fake university in Norway which closed down under threat of legal action by the Norwegian authorities.
Among other things, the fake accounts have been promoting a 27-minute speech about terrorism that Deeb gave last month. It has now been retweeted almost 25,000 times and a video of the speech itself, posted on YouTube, has supposedly been viewed an unbelievable 1,185,864 times.
Deeb appears to be an extraordinarily popular Twitter user, with almost 1.2 million followers. However, he has posted only 387 tweets – which means that on average each tweet must have attracted more than 3,000 new followers.
Some characteristics of the current online harassment reveal striking similarities to a campaign organised by supporters of the UAE in 2012 when I was still working at the Guardian. An opinion article by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood which appeared on the Guardian's website infuriated the UAE government, and this resulted in online abuse directed against me and the paper's Middle East editor, Ian Black. The UAE supporters wrongly assumed that we had been involved in publishing the article, though in fact neither of us knew anything about it before it appeared.
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Mystery
Britons missing in Qatar
The Emirati connection
4 Sept 2014: Two British men have been reported missing after travelling to Qatar to investigate the treatment of Nepalese migrant workers there. The assumption is that the Qatari authorities did not like what they were doing, and arrested them.
Migrant workers in Qatar, especially in the construction industry, often live and work in appalling conditions, and this certainly deserves to be investigated. But there may be more to the men's disappearance than meets the eye. It seems possible they have become caught up in a squabble between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Krishna Upadhyaya, 52, and Gundev Ghimire, 36, were working for the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) which is based in Norway and has offices in Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Sudan, Jordan and the UAE.
GNRD was established in 2008 "to enhance and support both human rights and development by adopting new strategies and policies for real change". It claims to be "a neutral and impartial organisation". Fifteen of its staff are accredited for access to the European Parliament. It has an annual budget of 3.5 million Euros, almost all of which comes from unspecified donations.
GNRD issues reports and press releases about a wide range of issues and countries, but some of these raise questions about how "neutral and impartial" it really is. It has been critical of Qatar (and rightly so) but it seems to have a remarkably soft spot for the UAE.
A search of its website reveals several enthusiastic reports about the UAE's achievements. One enthuses about the role of women in the UAE. One talks about the UAE's "achievements in the field of promoting and protecting the family and its members". Others praise the UAE for its environmental efforts, for the way it cares for the disabled and protects the rights of children.
GNRD also compiles a global human rights league table (IHRRI) which it describes as the "most trustful and complete international human rights rank indicator".
Its league table currently ranks the UAE in 13th position worldwide, just one place behind the UK and far ahead of any other Arab country – a point which the Emirati newspaper The National was quick to note. Qatar, incidentally, is ranked in 90th position.
Given this background, it would not be very surprising if the Qatari authorities assumed – rightly or wrongly – that GNRD's investigation had some political motive behind it.
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Britons=============
Loai Mohammed Deeb: ran a university from his home
An odd organisation
The Global Network for Rights and Development
6 Sept 2014: The Scandinavian University, established in Norway in 2007 and closed three years later, boasted of having 175 professors and more than 300 lecturers, plus a wide range of courses stretching from engineering and economics to sharia and Islamic Studies. How many students it had remains a complete mystery.
Oddly, the headquarters of this university were a single-storey building in Stavanger (see photograph) which also served as the home of Loai Mohammed Deeb, a lawyer of Palestinian origin, and documents filed with the authorities showed that despite the claims of a large teaching staff it had no employees at all.
The Norwegian education ministry became concerned that potential students could be misled into thinking it was an accredited institution. In 2010, threatened with legal action if he continued using the name "university", Deeb announced that the building in Stavanger was only the administrative office and he would shortly be moving it to the Middle East.
Interviewed by Aftenposten newspaper, he said the 175 professors, etc, were "at our department in the Middle East" but there is no evidence that they ever existed. The archived remains of the university's website can be found here in Arabic (and here in English via Google Translate).
A busy man
Despite the collapse of his Scandinavian University venture, however, Deeb had plenty of other things to keep him busy. He was co-founder (along with the Syrian Haytham Manna) of the Scandinavian Institute for Human Rights which aimed to "disseminate the culture of human rights, especially in the Middle East". He was also president of the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), and executive director of the International Coalition against War Criminals (ICAWC).
In 2012, during a UN discussion on granting consultative status to various NGOs, Israel's delegate noted that Deeb had been answering questions on behalf of all these organisations and wondered about the connection between them and "how one individual could manage all three groups".
Deeb has also spoken at the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of the Maarij Foundation for Peace and Development.
In 2009, Deeb joined a group of Norwegian lawyers attempting to bring war crimes charges against three Israeli politicians – Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak – together with seven Israeli military commanders.
Britons missing in Qatar
But it is Deeb's role in the Global Network for Rights and Development that is of most interest at the moment. Last weekend, two British men working for GNRD went missing in Qatar, and the assumption (still not confirmed) is that they were arrested by the authorities.
The men, Krishna Upadhyaya and Ghimire Gundev, are said to have gone to Qatar to investigate the conditions of Nepalese migrant workers there – an issue that has been causing international concern.
Upadhyaya, originally from Nepal, is described by the Guardian as "an experienced human rights researcher and worked for Anti-Slavery International for almost 12 years".
While it's possible the men were arrested because Qatar wanted to suppress their findings, it's also possible (and perhaps more likely) that they became unwittingly caught up in a squabble between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in which their employer, GNRD, is suspected by the Qataris of playing a part.
Alastair Sloan points out in a blog post that the UAE and Qatar are currently engaged in "an unprecedented row over support for the Muslim Brotherhood, with UAE strongly opposed to them and Qatar strongly in favour". Sloan adds that there have been tit-for-tat arguments going on for months and that the UAE recently arrested two Qatari nationals on spying charges. The arrests of Upadhyaya and Gundev (if that is what happened) may have been intended as a reprisal for that.
Also linked to the Qatari-Emirati feud and the question of the Muslim Brotherhood, a UAE newspaper, The National, published a lengthy investigation last June into "individuals and organisations in London with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood" which it said were "behind a series of media attacks on the UAE" (see earlier blog post).
In a self-righteous editorial about this, The National said: "The UAE conducts its domestic and foreign policy openly, not in secret. The least we should expect is that our critics are similarly open about their motivations, sympathies and sources of funding."
Questions of funding
The Global Network for Rights and Development is a fairly obscure organisation and before the incident in Qatar its activities had been largely unnoticed by the media. Nevertheless, it has offices in Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Sudan, Jordan and the UAE. It is well funded – to the tune of 3.5 million euros a year – and has an astonishing 1.14 million followers on Twitter. This is extraordinary considering that it has posted only 359 tweets, and a check via the Social Bakers website suggests almost all its apparent followers are fakes.
GNRD says most of its funding comes from donations, and its website includes the logos of five "sponsors" who presumably provide at least some of this money.
The first of these sponsors is an Emirates-based business called Deeb Consulting and the company's website says its sole proprietor is Loai Mohammed Deeb.
It is difficult to identify the four other sponsors since no details are given – only the logos. The logos say "Advance Security Technology", "Kaoud Law", "My Dream" (with the words transliterated into Russian beneath) and "Action Design". Attempts to trace these companies through a Google image search have so far drawn a blank.
 |  |  |
 |  |
GNRD appears to be active in and around various UN forums and is also registered with the European Parliament for lobbying purposes (fifteen of its staff have official accreditation). According to a recent statement on GNRD's website, it "has fought zealously, both in Brussels and at the United Nations, to improve workers' rights in Qatar, and eliminate forced labour through the sponsorship system".
Exploitation of migrant workers is a major problem in the Arab Gulf states, including the UAE, but GNRD's campaigning has focused particularly on Qatar. There is no word on its website, for example, about the mass expulsions of migrants from Saudi Arabia during the last year-and-a-half. In fact, a search of GNRD's website reveals nothing that is critical of Saudi Arabia, though one item reports that "Saudi Arabia is particularly keen on cooperating with the UAE to develop renewable energy and clean technology in the Gulf region."
Election monitoring
GNRD has also done election monitoring in Algeria, Jordan and Egypt.
In Algeria last April, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected for a fourth five-year term with more than 80% of the votes, despite his serious ill-health. GNRD's report was broadly favourable, saying the election was "generally conducted in a free and fair manner", though it highlighted seven areas where "electoral procedure can be improved in future".
Its report of Jordan's parliamentary elections last year was considerably more critical. Among other things, it called for revision of the kingdom's electoral law since large numbers of voters "decided not to participate in the election as they felt that the present law would not leave them with a fair representation". It also recommended "a thorough investigation as regards the unexplained circulation of money inside in the polling rooms".
On the other hand, this year's presidential election in Egypt which legitimised General Sisi's seizure of power was greeted with much praise from GNRD and two other organisations (Maat for Peace Development and Human Rights, and the International Institute for Peace Justice and Human Rights) which had been monitoring the election jointly.
Their report said "the Egyptian people have experienced a unique process toward democratic transition, and despite the fact that minor errors and inaccuracies occurred, these do not shed a negative light on the overall results of the electoral process". It continued:
"The Joint Mission was honoured to be a part of the 2014 Egyptian Presidential Election and contribute to promoting its transparency, integrity, and success. The Joint Mission expresses its hope that these contributions will support Egypt’s development and a smooth transition to democracy. We wish success to Egypt, being one of the most influential countries in the Middle East, and commend their achievements thus far towards a path to democracy."
GNRD and the Emirates
But the aspect of GNRD's work that raises most eyebrows is its relationship with the UAE.
GNRD produces an international league table of human rights which currently (and rather incredibly) ranks the UAE in 14th position worldwide – just one place behind the UK and far ahead of any other Arab country. Articles on GNRD's website also portray the UAE's human rights record in a highly positive light. One article comments favourably on the role of women in the UAE. Others talk about the UAE's "achievements in the field of promoting and protecting the family and its members", also praising the UAE for its environmental efforts, and for the way it cares for the disabled and protects the rights of children.
This glowing picture is not one that many others share. The US State Department, for instance, said of the UAE in its most recent annual report:
"The emirates are under patriarchal rule with political allegiance defined by loyalty to tribal leaders, leaders of the individual emirates, and leaders of the federation. There are limited democratically elected institutions, but no political parties ..."The three most significant human rights problems [during 2013] were citizens’ inability to change their government; limitations on citizens’ civil liberties (including the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, and internet use); and arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detentions, and lengthy pretrial detentions."
Similarly, Human Rights Watch, in its latest World Report, said:
"The United Arab Emirates continues to crack down on freedom of expression and association. The authorities are arbitrarily detaining scores of individuals they suspect of links to domestic and international Islamist groups. A court convicted 69 dissidents in July after a manifestly unfair trial, in which evidence emerged of systematic torture at state security facilities."The UAE made no reforms to a system that facilitates the forced labour of migrant workers. Plans to ameliorate conditions for female domestic workers fall short of the standards outlined in the convention on domestic workers that the International Labour Organisation adopted in 2012."
Although GNRD maintains an office in the UAE, civil society organisations in general are not particularly welcomed by the authorities there. All associations and NGOs have to register with the Ministry of Social Affairs and, according to the US State Department, they have to follow the government’s censorship guidelines and receive prior government approval before publishing any material.
GNRD, since it is based in Norway, may not be covered by these local rules but foreign-based organisations have also run into trouble in the UAE. In 2012, Emirati authorities abruptly closed the Dubai office of the National Democratic Institute (an American NGO) and two of its staff were briefly detained. On the same day, the polling organisation Gallup and the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation also closed their offices in Abu Dhabi – apparently at the government's behest.
All this raises a lot of questions about GNRD and its claim to be "neutral and impartial". It does not, of course, justify Qatar's detention of two GNRD employees (if that is indeed what happened) but it does complicate efforts to secure their release.
UPDATE, 7 September 2014: Qatar's foreign ministry has now confirmed that the two Britons have been arrested and "are under investigation for violating the law of the land," al-Jazeera reports.
==============
Emirati connections
GNRD itself is an obscure but well-funded organisation (to the tune of 3.5 million euros a year) and has offices in Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Sudan, Jordan and the UAE. It appears to be active in and around various UN forums and is also registered with the European Parliament for lobbying purposes (fifteen of its staff have official accreditation).
GNRD says most of its funding comes from donations, though the sources of money are far from transparent. On its website, at the bottom of the home page, GNRD has a section headed "Our collaborators and sponsors" with a collection of sixteen logos, some of which are illegible. It is unclear which of these actually donate money but the website says GNRD's "main sponsor" is the GNRD Foundation. In other words, GNRD seems to be sponsoring itself.
The GNRD Foundation (registered in Norway late last year) is a new sponsor on the website and replaces a previous sponsor, Deeb Consulting – an Emirates-based company owned by Loai Deeb.
GNRD has good connections with the UAE, which is one of the Gulf states bankrolling the Sisi regime in Egypt. GNRD is particularly fortunate to have an office in the UAE, since civil society organisations are not generally welcomed by the authorities there. All associations and NGOs in the UAE have to register with the Ministry of Social Affairs and, according to the US State Department, they have to follow the government’s censorship guidelines and receive prior government approval before publishing any material.
In 2012, Emirati authorities abruptly closed the Dubai office of the National Democratic Institute (an American NGO) and two of its staff were briefly detained. On the same day, the polling organisation Gallup and the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation also closed their offices in Abu Dhabi – apparently at the government's behest.
GNRD produces an international league table of human rights and the most recent one (rather incredibly) ranked the UAE in 14th position worldwide – just one place behind the UK and far ahead of any other Arab country. Following criticism in social media, that league table has now been deleted, though another one is promised in 92 days.
Articles on GNRD's website also portray the UAE's human rights record in a highly positive light. One article comments favourably on the role of women in the UAE. Others talk about the UAE's "achievements in the field of promoting and protecting the family and its members", also praising the UAE for its environmental efforts, and for the way it cares for the disabled and protects the rights of children.
This glowing picture is not one that many others share. The US State Department and Human Rights Watch, for instance, have both been far more critical of the UAE's rights record.
Last August, during a political spat between the UAE and Qatar, Qatar arrested two British men who had gone there on behalf of GNRD to investigate the conditions of Nepalese migrant workers. The pair were eventually released without charges but their report on migrant workers has so far not been published.
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Britons
==========
Mansoor Lootah: attacked Human Rights Watch
Mystery group defends UAE's rights record
Vitriolic response to criticisms
21 Feb 2015: Human Rights Watch has recently come under attack from a mysterious Swiss-based organisation objecting to a section of its annual World Report which discusses the United Arab Emirates.
Summarising the human rights situation in the Emirates, HRW's report said:
"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) continued in 2014 to arbitrarily detain individuals it perceives as posing a threat to national security, and its security forces continued to face allegations that they torture detainees in pretrial detention.
"UAE courts invoked repressive laws to prosecute government critics, and a new counterterrorism law poses a further threat to government critics and rights activists.
"Migrant construction workers on one of the country’s most high-profile projects continued to face serious exploitation, and female domestic workers were still excluded from regulations that apply to workers in other sectors."
This prompted a vitriolic response from the International Gulf Organization (IGO) which describes itself as a "non-governmental organisation dedicated to implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at regional and international levels".
In a denunciation posted on IGO's website, the organisation's chairman, Mansoor Lootah, accused Human Rights Watch of "targeting" the UAE. The article continued:
"He [Lootah] equally pointed out that this targeting has its motives and grounds on the organisation’s side and that they are selfish and far away from the lofty human values founded by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and as enshrined by the International Bill of Rights and Freedoms.
"The Human Rights Watch Report specifically for this year, is a drastic violation of those rights and freedoms with its allegations, defects and contradictions which makes clear the goals, rationales and its value and considerations of rights which the Report failed to mention..
"This also greatly influenced the Report’s credibility and reliability, especially in some aspects with which the Report has dealt shamefully with no justification, appreciation or respect of the public awareness, and without observing any limits of integrity, fairness and credibility."
Besides appearing on IGO's website, the article was also circulated by WAM, the UAE government's news agency, and published or summarised by at least two Emirati newspapers, the Khaleej Times and The National.
It's interesting that Emirati media think the International Gulf Organization is credible enough to be worth quoting, since it is a very peculiar NGO (if, in fact, it really is an NGO). Its website gives no postal address and no phone number, and a web page purportedly listing its board of directors is entirely blank. Unlike most NGOs, its website doesn't invite donations from the public. There is, however, a place on the website where people can apply to become a member of IGO, but it's not very inviting: you have to provide a copy of your CV and explain why you want to join.
Although IGO claims to be an international organisation with headquarters in Geneva, it seems to be mainly interested in fending off complaints about the UAE's human rights record.
In 2013 it produced a documentary film about the controversial trial of 94 Islamists accused of conspiracy in the UAE. The film challenged claims that the trial was unfair and the UAE's government-run National Media Council helpfully organised a special showing of it for journalists.
IGO claimed to have financed the film itself, without government support. Bloomberg reported at the time:
"Robert Resto, IGO’s marketing and media manager, declined to say how the group, which he described as a not-for-profit and non-government group, is funded."
Last year IGO produced a 13-page report on legislation in the GCC countries relating to domestic workers.
Although the report was not uncritical of Gulf states' performance in this area, the Migrant Rights organisation accused it of misrepresenting the situation faced by domestic workers and regurgitating government talking points without substantive analysis.
Earlier this week, IGO signed an agreement with the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights which (according to IGO) will "enable the two bodies to work more effectively to protect and boost the respect for human rights, and to spread the culture of human rights and develop the legislations and practices related to human rights in the Arab world".
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Mystery
=================
The price of criticising the UAE
Online vilification continues
26 Feb 2015: As regular readers will know, some odd things have been happening since I raised questions about the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), an organisation registered in Norway which has links to the United Arab Emirates and takes an unusually favourable view of the UAE's human rights performance.
I have also raised questions about another Emirati-linked "human rights" group, the Swiss-based International Gulf Organization (IGO), which earlier this month attacked Human Rights Watch over its criticisms of the UAE.
It was a couple of days after my most recent blog post about GNRD that the weird things began. The details are here and here but, just to recap:
Someone created a fake Facebook profile using my name and photograph.
My own Facebook account was suspended after someone complained that I was using a false name.
Someone attempted to hack into my Twitter account.
A Twitter account called @Media_intel began making false claims about me. One of its tweets said I was being paid $50,000 a year by Qatar; another said I had been expelled from Yemen for a sexual offence.
The claims were then retweeted by hundreds of fake Twitter accounts.
Interestingly, these same fake accounts had been used earlier to mass-tweet links to a speech by Loai Deeb, the president of GNRD. This leads me to believe that whoever organised or paid for the promotion of Deeb's speech through fake accounts also organised or paid for the retweeting of @Media_intel's claims.
Now for a brief update.
Someone has set up a fake Twitter account in my name (@BrianWhitak). This hasn't been very active so far but it includes some tweets copied from my real Twitter account (@Brian_Whit).
During a periodic check of the statistics for my website I found there had been 52,300 page views last Friday and 27,638 on Saturday. As far as I'm aware, both these figures are far higher than I have ever had before on a single day. Daily traffic to the website is usually in the range of 3,000-4,000 page views and doesn't fluctuate much. I can't see any explanation for this surge in traffic except, perhaps, as an attempt to crash the website.
Several new Twitter accounts have begun posting about my imagined connection with Qatar
I have also received emails thanking me for subscribing to websites that I haven't subscribed to.
One was a dating website; the other was bayt.com, a job-search website. Someone has created a fake profile/CV at bayt.com which uses my photograph (below) and says I am looking for employment in Qatar. -
i was particularly intrigued by the photograph of myself. It has appeared only a handful of times on the internet and I don't recall when or where it was taken, but I do remember the last time I saw it.
The same picture was used in a Tweet by @emarati001 in 2012 when I was still working at the Guardian and the paper came under attack from the UAE:
The photograph also figured in a Twitter campaign (accompanied by a YouTube video) under the hashtag #uk_supports_traitors:
The main cause of the 2012 campaign against the Guardian was an article by Said Nasser al-Teniji, an Emirati Islamist, published on the paper's website. The online abuse was directed mainly against me and Ian Black, the Guardian's Middle East editor, even though neither of us had played any part in the publication of Teniji's article.
Ian Black referred to this later in a Guardian article about
the UAE's sensitivies:
"The Emirati authorities ... do not take negative publicity lying down. A recent comment piece in the Guardian by an Islah activist has attracted particular venom. The fightback in Abu Dhabi has been fast and abusive. Under a Twitter hashtag #UK_supports_traitors the Guardian and BBC have been accused of being in the pay of the Qataris; knowledge of Arabic is produced as evidence of involvement in 'espionage'. Harassed foreign office diplomats are being forced to explain that the British government does not control the British press.
"But the campaign is wider than that. The UAE has been lobbying hard in both Washington and London against their 'honeymoon' with the new regimes of the Arab spring, with special emphasis on Egypt. It is perhaps over-stating the case to call this effort a Gulf 'counter-revolution' but the Cold War notion of 'containment' certainly fits the bill."
If I were to ask Emirati officials about this online harassment I'm sure they would deny it has anything to do with their government. They would probably attribute it to over-zealous Emirati citizens who feel slighted by criticism of their country.
What puzzles me, though, is why Emiratis specifically would indulge in such crude behaviour. I have probably said critical things about every country in the Middle East at some time or other and the reactions have been varied, but I have seen nothing from other countries in the region quite like this.
===============
http://www.al-bab.com/blog/blog-images/Lizin.jpg
GNRD's 'High Commissioner' sentenced
Another blow for UAE-linked organisation
8 March 2015: Last week brought more embarrassment for the UAE-linked Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) following the revelation a few months ago that its founder/president had previously run a fake university in Norway. On Thursday, a court in Belgium gave GNRD's extravagantly-titled "High Commissioner for Europe" a suspended prison sentence and banned her from public office for five years.
The "High Commissioner" is Anne-Marie Lizin, a veteran Belgian politician whose GNRD duties include overseeing GNRD-W, a newly-established department concerned with the rights of women and girls.
Anne-Marie Lizin: five-year suspension from
public office. Photo: Guy Goossens
In her political career Lizin served three years as president of the Belgian senate and is currently its honorary president but the criminal case relates to her time as mayor in the historic town of Huy – and the use of municipal employees (who in any case ought to be politically neutral) for distributing election literature on her behalf.
The arrangement was that employees who canvassed for Lizin during working hours would not have any pay deducted or be required to make up the lost time. This meant the municipality, in effect, would be subsidising Lizin's campaign.
Last Thursday, an appeal court in Liege confirmed the sentence imposed earlier on Lizin by a lower court. Lizin is planning a further appeal – to Belgium's Supreme Court – and the ban on holding public office will not take effect until all legal avenues have been exhausted.
Lizin, who was expelled from the Socialist Party in 2009, clung to her mayoral post in Huy for 26 years and left it acrimoniously. Having been forced to resign amid a series of scandals, she then got into a dispute with the new mayor, Micheline Toussaint, about parking spaces behind the Town Hall which resulted in Lizin ramming Toussaint's car (reports here and here).
Belgian media also reported that after leaving office Lizin had retained a mobile phone provided by the municipality. This only came to light when the municipality received a 5,000 euros bill which Lizin reportedly agreed to pay after being threatened with legal action.
Next Tuesday, Lizin is due to speak at a GNRD event in Geneva, held on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council. According to the blurb, this will focus on the outcomes of a conference about human rights and counter-terrorism which GNRD held in Geneva last month (and which I discussed in an earlier blog post).
GNRD's invitation to next Tuesday's event
Lizin also spoke at the February conference and the text of her speech (in French) is here. She writes frequently about her GNRD activities on her website.
Continuing harassment
Following a previous blog post about GNRD and another about the International Gulf Organization, a "human rights" group that appears to be a front for the Emirati government, supporters of GNRD and the UAE launched a campaign of online harassment directed against me:
Someone created a fake Facebook profile using my name and photograph.
My own Facebook account was suspended after someone complained that I was using a false name.
Someone attempted to hack into my Twitter account.
A Twitter account called @Media_intel began making false claims about me. One of its tweets said I was being paid $50,000 a year by Qatar; another said I had been expelled from Yemen for a sexual offence.
The claims were then retweeted by hundreds of fake Twitter accounts which had previously been used to advertise a speech by GNRD's founder/president, Loai Deeb.
For more details of this harassment, see my earlier blog post.
Last week there was a further attempt to hack my Facebook account and my Twitter feed continues to be spammed by tweets from fake accounts.
This might seem a very strange way for supporters of a human rights organisation to behave, but GNRD does say on its website that it "uses out of the ordinary and unique approaches" in its work.
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Mystery
=================
Critics of UAE face new harassment
Who hired the private investigator?
28 March 2015: Two Americans who publicly criticised the exploitation of migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates have found themselves under investigation by a private detective, the New York Times reports.
A private investigator called Loren Berger has been making inquiries about Andrew Ross, a professor at New York University (NYU), and Ariel Kaminer, a journalist who formerly worked for the New York Times – reportedly in the hope of finding people who would say negative things about them.
Earlier this month Ross was refused admission to the Emirates, where NYU has a campus. Ross, who has frequently criticised the university's arrangement with the UAE, had been planning to continue his research into labour conditions there.
Kaminer reported critically on UAE labour conditions in an article for the New York Times which was published last May.
Sea O'Driscoll, a freelance reporter who worked with Kaminer on the article, has since told the New York Times that he was offered "generous payments and immunity from prosecution if he would write favorably about the [UAE] government". He said he had refused and had not been permitted to re-enter the country after leaving for a short period, the paper added.
When contacted by the New York Times, Berger – the detective – said: "I can't tell you who I’m working for ... I don't know who the client is. It's not unusual." The NYT's report continues:
On January 29, Ms. Berger called Susan Fraiman, a professor of English at the University of Virginia. Professor Fraiman had written critically about some of Professor Ross’s academic work.
Ms Berger “said something like, ‘We’re looking for people to comment negatively,’ ” Professor Fraiman recalled in an interview. “I told her that I don’t know him personally. It seemed odd.”
She said that she had asked about the context of the investigation, and that Ms Berger had told her the president of NYU was under fire over the university’s involvement in the Emirates.
As Professor Fraiman recalled the conversation, “She said: ‘We’re investigating Andrew Ross for his comments about this and a particular journalist, Ariel Kaminer, who wrote about it. By the way, do you know her?’ ”
Both Professor Fraiman and Ms. Kaminer attended Princeton University, but at different times; both said they did not know each other.
New York University has issued a statement saying it has no knowledge of Berger's investigation and no involvement in it. “It’s reprehensible and offensive on its face, and we call on whoever is involved to desist immediately.”
Asked by the New York Times if the UAE also condemns the surveillance or can cast any light on it, a spokeswoman for the Emirates embassy in Washington did not respond. The paper notes that the UAE government "has a record of striking back at those critical of migrant labour conditions there".
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been facing persistent online harassment as a result of articles I wrote about two strange "human rights" organisations which have links to the UAE.
One was the International Gulf Organization (IGO), based in Switzerland, which describes itself as a "non-governmental organisation dedicated to implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at regional and international levels". Last month IGO published a vitriolic attack on Human Rights Watch which it accused of "targeting" the UAE in its annual World Report.
The other organisation is the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), based in Norway, which also has links to the UAE and promotes an unusually favourable view of human rights there.
The harassment, which began in mid-February and was still continuing yesterday, has included repeated attempts to hack my Twitter and Facebook accounts, the creation of fake online profiles using my name or photograph, and the use of hundreds of fake Twitter accounts to post false and defamatory allegations about me.
These include claims that I am paid $50,000 a year by the government of Qatar and that I am evading tax.
A video posted anonymously on YouTube claims that I was in Yemen during the uprising against the Saleh regime (which I was not) and induced a Yemeni man to have sex with me by offering him money and a job and Qatar.
The latest effort is a blog called "Brian Whitaker owns fake companies", where an article purportedly written by someone called Adam L Conner claims:
"In 2007, Brian was made redundant from The Guardian because of his bias articles that favoured Qatar’s position on issues in the Middle East."
In fact, I left the Guardian in 2012 – five years later – for reasons that were unconnected with anything I had ever written about Qatar. As evidence of my supposed support for Qatar, Conner cites one of my blog posts which criticised Sheikha Moza, wife of the former emir. Bizarrely, Conner claims the article "had a clear intention of glamourising the Qatari royal family".
There is also a new Wikipedia Arabic page titled "Brian Whitaker, Reporting for Qatar", though as yet it has no content.
I made a formal complaint that Conner's blog posts were defamatory and received an email from Google saying that if I wanted them removed I would have to get a court order. The email continued:
"Blogger hosts third-party content. It is not a creator or mediator of that content. We encourage you to resolve any disputes directly with the individual who posted the content.
"If you cannot reach an agreement and choose to pursue legal action against the individual who posted the content, and that action results in a judicial determination that the material is illegal or should be removed, please send us the court order seeking removal.
"In cases where the individual who posted the content is anonymous [as in this case], we may provide you with user information pursuant to a valid third party subpoena or other appropriate legal process against Google Inc."
The same fake Twitter accounts posting defamatory allegations about me are also being used to promote the work of GNRD and its founder-president, Loai Deeb, a lawyer of Palestinian origin who previously ran a fake university in Norway which closed down under threat of legal action by the Norwegian authorities.
Among other things, the fake accounts have been promoting a 27-minute speech about terrorism that Deeb gave last month. It has now been retweeted almost 25,000 times and a video of the speech itself, posted on YouTube, has supposedly been viewed an unbelievable 1,185,864 times.
Deeb appears to be an extraordinarily popular Twitter user, with almost 1.2 million followers. However, he has posted only 387 tweets – which means that on average each tweet must have attracted more than 3,000 new followers.
Some characteristics of the current online harassment reveal striking similarities to a campaign organised by supporters of the UAE in 2012 when I was still working at the Guardian. An opinion article by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood which appeared on the Guardian's website infuriated the UAE government, and this resulted in online abuse directed against me and the paper's Middle East editor, Ian Black. The UAE supporters wrongly assumed that we had been involved in publishing the article, though in fact neither of us knew anything about it before it appeared.
- See more at: http://www.al-bab.com/blog/compilation-gnrd.htm#Mystery
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق