{"id":3641,"date":"2016-11-21T14:48:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T13:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3641"},"modified":"2016-11-23T09:39:18","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T08:39:18","slug":"the-laws-in-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/3641\/","title":{"rendered":"The Laws in Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"

I meant to comment on this<\/a> earlier:<\/p>\n

\n

A British woman has been charged with having extra-marital sex in Dubai after reporting she was raped, according to a UK-based legal advice group.<\/p>\n

The Detained in Dubai group said the woman was arrested after she claimed she was raped by two British men.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The woman, who is in her 20s, was reportedly attacked by two men from Birmingham while she was on holiday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And according to the Daily Mail<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Last year, Ms Waterman Smith waived her anonymity to reveal how she was raped when her attackers tampered with her drink at the Rock Bottom Bar in the Regent Palace Hotel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a thing a lot of people don’t know about Dubai: the laws there can not only be very strict, but they are also flouted so brazenly people forget they exist. \u00a0For instance, it is illegal to drink in Dubai unless one of the following is the case:<\/p>\n

1) You drinking in the bar of a hotel in which you are resident, i.e. a paying guest.<\/p>\n

2) You are a resident of Dubai or one of the other Emirates and you hold a liquor-license.<\/p>\n

In other words, if you are drinking in a bar at a hotel in which you are not resident, you are breaking the law. \u00a0The problem is, everyone does this, and the whole place is set up to allow this. \u00a0At least one bar – the Irish Village under the tennis stadium – is not attached to any hotel, yet is packed with tourists. \u00a0Provided there are no problems, the authorities turn a blind eye.<\/p>\n

Also, it is illegal for a man and woman to share a hotel or residence in Dubai unless they are married. \u00a0Enforcing this law would destroy the tourist industry overnight, but that is the law nonetheless and if you live in one of the smaller hotels you will sometimes be asked by the hotel staff to prove you are married if you’re trying to bring a girl home. \u00a0Which can be a bit difficult if you don’t know her name, as I have seen once with an Arab trying to sneak a prostitute into his quarters. \u00a0So if a British woman turns up with her boyfriend in Dubai for a weekend stopover on the way to Thailand and they check into a hotel together, technically they are in breach of the law. \u00a0Again, none of this is a problem – until something goes wrong. \u00a0Then, usually for the first time, somebody finds out what the law actually says.<\/p>\n

Islamic laws apply in Dubai, and they say that a woman is not allowed to be alone in a hotel room with a man who is not her husband. \u00a0This\u00a0is based on the\u00a0belief that a woman who is alone in a hotel room with a man who is not her husband might have sex with him, and that is prohibited in Islamic law. \u00a0Now this might be a bit backward, but that’s how they think. \u00a0And the law is also there because they believe a woman alone in a hotel room with a\u00a0strange\u00a0man or men might be subject to an attack, and to prevent this they simply make it illegal for her to be in that position in the first place. \u00a0It might be illiberal, unfair, misogynistic, etc. but it is not inherently stupid, and it avoids them having to get into the “he said\/she said” arguments which plague all such cases everywhere else.<\/p>\n

I know Rock Bottom Bar, it is an absolute shithole with a sticky carpet – or at least it was when I was there in 2003-6. \u00a0It is chock-full of wasted tourists, and it is a meat-market for those looking for a pick-up. \u00a0The bar is well named, which is more than can be said for the hotel itself:\u00a0there is little that is regal or palatial about the Regent Palace. \u00a0I never knew of anyone who stayed there, and would guess the bar provides the bulk of its revenue. \u00a0Those people staggering back to a hotel in the company of somebody they just met are unlikely to be met with a sympathetic hearing from the authorities if something goes wrong.<\/p>\n

Of course, if she was raped then an appalling crime has occurred. \u00a0But the authorities are in a difficult position here: the law says she should not have been with them in the first place, precisely to avoid unpleasantness like this<\/em>. \u00a0Us westerners might not like this law, but that is how the Emiratis govern themselves, and to be fair they give tourists and expats a free pass on this – until something goes wrong and their hand is forced. \u00a0When the woman concerned\u00a0made the complaint she didn’t know the law, and she has now compelled them to enforce it. \u00a0If they turn a blind eye then locals – who are more closely policed on such matters than tourists, especially women – will be entitled to ask why the law is not being applied in such an obvious case, and will likely think her being white and Western is the reason (pity the Bangladeshi maids who have been imprisoned and flogged for minor offences).<\/p>\n

This will be the case regardless of whether the men are charged with rape or not:\u00a0the reports are unclear as to whether the two men will be charged, are on bail, or are free to leave but the two offences are separate as I understand it. \u00a0Now it may turn out that the woman gets charged and jailed and the men go free without anyone taking her claims seriously, which would be pretty awful. \u00a0But it might also be the case that the police take her seriously but don’t have any evidence except for her say-so that she was raped, and aren’t prepared to put them on trial just to make the country look more modern (as if rape trials in Western countries are not fraught with problems).<\/p>\n

The accusations of drink tampering only serve to make things worse: the Dubai police will know Rock Bottom well, and the type of place that it is. \u00a0Perhaps there have been other cases of drinks being spiked in there, and if so the police would know about it: more complaints would have been forthcoming, and undercover policemen – who frequent the bars – would see it. \u00a0Also, the bar managers and security would be keeping a sharp eye-out: the last thing they want is a police investigation. \u00a0That’s leaving aside the issue of where a date-rape drug would be bought from. \u00a0Sex isn’t hard to come by in Dubai, the place being rammed full of prostitutes. \u00a0Drugs might be easily obtained (I have no idea), but I think the police would take some convincing that she had her drink spiked and wasn’t just hammered. \u00a0If the two men were residents, the police might consider it a possibility. \u00a0If they were tourists, no chance. \u00a0I hope to hell she didn’t make up the bit about\u00a0her drink being tampered to cover for her being totally wasted on tequila, leading the police to doubt her entire story.<\/p>\n

I am not writing this in defence of Dubai or the prevailing Islamic laws, I don’t like either the place or the way it is run, which is why I left. \u00a0However, I don’t think berating the Dubai police is exactly fair either: rape accusations are notoriously difficult to deal with anywhere, and they have tried to avoid their occurrence by applying laws which I don’t agree with, but then I’m not in charge. \u00a0It might simply be the case there is no evidence that a rape occurred, which of course is not proof that it did not, only that charges cannot be pressed with the hope of a conviction. \u00a0One could argue that the Dubai authorities should do more to inform visitors of what the laws are, but had they done so would the woman in question have stayed home with a book and given Rock Bottom a wide berth? \u00a0I doubt it. \u00a0There are serious issues with the way women are treated in Dubai and the wider Middle East, particularly as regard equality under the law and sexual assault\/rape. \u00a0I just don’t think this is the best case to put forward as an example of why things ought to change.<\/p>\n

If she did go to Rock Bottom, have her drink spiked, and was then raped she has my every sympathy. \u00a0If that was indeed the case, I think the Dubai authorities will figure this out and find a way to drop the charges in a face-saving manner, which they may do anyway even if they don’t believe her. \u00a0What the British press needs to do is resist the temptation to stand on their soapbox and piss off the Emiratis so that they throw the book at her just to make a point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I meant to comment on this earlier: A British woman has been charged with having extra-marital sex in Dubai after reporting she was raped, according to a UK-based legal advice group. The Detained in Dubai group said the woman was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3641"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3672,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3641\/revisions\/3672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}