Yet another Dubai rape story

Here is another absurd story from Dubai carried by the NYT.

Westerners are often not careful enough. Don't assume you are superior and that your ways is the way in other parts of the world especially the Middle East. Most of you aren't in trouble there either because you do your homework or more likely you aren't even keen to go there. Dubai is especially risky because it tries to hypocritically live in the two worlds of modernity and ancient Islam.

When we were there, we made ourselves invisible. We don't even trust our own CG until we test him first. He failed the test. We also found our he was the classmate of our good friend elder brother in RI many years ago.

Emirati Road Bullies

Not surprised by this at all. We have left Dubai for a a few years by now and harbor no dreams of returning. Some people turn a blind eye to such things, but not us. Since we can't do very much about the situation there at least we stay away and do not support them.

I came to know of this from AsiaOne.

Capping the Dubai experience with this

The incidents in this TNP story happened after we have left Dubai - fortunately. I am not one bit surprised with them at all. The ang mohs were the vanguard. Quietly other nationals must have suffered quietly, but when they happend to ang mohs, it is hard that it do not leak and get reported. Now there are enough Singaporeans who are caught in the web of Dubai official stupidity and incompetence.

I am reproducing the AsiaOne article because SPH cannot be counted on to keep it available indefinitely.


http://www.asiaone.com/print/News/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20120104-319727.html
Singaporean family detained in Dubai cell with criminals


A Singaporean family was prevented from boarding their flight at a Dubai airport and detained for 14 hours. The mother and her daughter were kept in a cell with other criminals. -TNP

Teh Jen Lee



Wed, Jan 04, 2012

The New Paper



Dubai spelt danger for several innocent Singaporeans after authorities there arrested them for reasons that were later proven to be false or unsubstantiated.



Including the latest case of a family wrongly detained on Christmas Eve, there have been three other cases from 2010 to last year.



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In one case in January last year, a Singaporean, then pregnant, and her husband were arrested at the airport in Dubai on charges of holding forged passports.



They spent nine months in jail, during which the woman suffered a miscarriage because of the jail conditions.



In the Christmas Eve case, the family was prevented from boarding their departing flight at the airport in Dubai and detained for 14 hours in a case of mistaken identity.



It was a nightmare because the wife and her 13-year-old daughter were separated from the husband and made to spend the night in a crowded police cell.



In response to media queries, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said the family was detained at the airport by Dubai immigration authorities on Christmas Eve last year.



Their mobile phones were confiscated and they were not allowed to contact their relatives or the Singapore Consulate-General in Dubai for assistance.



After being held at the airport for about three hours, the family was then taken to the Dubai Police Criminal Investigation Department Headquarters, where they spent the night in separate holding cells.



The spokesman said: "At no stage was the family informed of the reason for their detention nor were their questions addressed by the police personnel.



"The daughter was also kept with her mother in a cell with about 40 other females of ill-repute, despite her young age."



The following morning, the husband and wife were interrogated separately.



After the questioning, the Dubai police finally acknowledged that they were mistaken and had detained the wrong people.



The family was released on Christmas Day.



MFAsaid that throughout the detention of 14 hours, the family, especially the daughter, was put through considerable distress.





Not informed



"Furthermore, the Singapore Consulate-General in Dubai was not officially informed of the matter," said the spokesman.



"The MFA takes a very serious view of the incident, which involved the failure to allow for the detained Singaporeans access to consular assistance."



The MFA called in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) interim Charge d'Affaires last Friday to formally register their "grave concerns over the wrongful detention of and treatment of the Singaporean family".



MFA has further requested the UAE Embassy's assurance that such incidents do not happen again and reiterated the responsibility of the UAE authorities to promptly inform the MFA representative in the UAE whenever a Singaporean is arrested.



Said the spokesman: "Our Consulate-General in Dubai has also taken up this matter with the concerned authorities in Dubai to ensure that such incidents are not repeated in the future."



Economic ties have been flourishing between Singapore and the UAE.



Singapore established diplomatic relations with the UAE in 1985 and trade between the two countries has grown from $5 billion in 2002 to $13.9 billion in 2010.



The UAE ambassador to Singapore, Mr Mohamed A Al Qubaisi, said about 300 Singapore companies are represented in the UAE, with the number rising each year.



The Business Times reported that the Emirates airline will start daily Singapore-Dubai flights from February.



Many Singaporeans have been visiting Dubai, drawn by its mega-malls and resorts.



And it isn't just the Singaporeans who are visiting the city.



Last year, Dubai was the only Middle Eastern city that made it to the top 10 list of the most-visited destinations worldwide in a Euromonitor International report.





Singaporeans detained



June 2010



A Chinese Singaporean man living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was detained at the airport in Dubai after he was seen helping two women who were suspected of carrying forged Taiwanese passports.



He had met them while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Manchester, UK, that transited in Dubai. He helped them when they encountered language difficulties at the airport.



Little did he expect to be penalised for his good deed.



He was arrested on suspicion of human trafficking and accused of using a forged Singapore passport.



Despite the Dubai Consulate-General's insistence to the Dubai authorities that he was holding a genuine passport, they detained him until his case was heard in December 2010.



He was cleared of all charges and finally released.



January 2011



A Chinese Singaporean man and his pregnant wife, both in their 40s, were on a flight to Rome that had a transit in Dubai.



They were chaperoning four children as a favour to a friend.



The couple was suspected of holding forged passports, detained, and charged with human trafficking.



The woman had gone on the trip to visit places of worship in Rome and offer prayers for the safe delivery of her child.



But due to the conditions in her detention centre, she had a miscarriage.



The couple was detained for nearly nine months as it took eight months before their case was heard.



They were given a suspended three-month jail sentence each.



The Singapore Consulate-General in Dubai found out about the case only when they were contacted by the couple for emergency travel documents.



This was at the end of their period of detention as the authorities had misplaced their passports.



November 2011



During the Hari Raya Haji holidays, a Singapore Indian full-time national serviceman was detained because he was accused of photographing an Egyptian lady who was with her husband.



The Singaporean had merely been taking general shots of a mall.



The Dubai Consulate-General was initially able to get the Egyptian couple to withdraw the accusation.



However, instead of an amicable settlement, there was a stalemate when the Dubai police sided with the complainants, who wanted compensation.



After sustained pressure, the Dubai Consulate-General managed to get the Singaporean released after he spent one night in detention.



The man had been held at the notorious Bur Dubai police station, where a British national was previously beaten to death by the officers.





Other nationalities detained in Dubai



Dubai maybe one of the most-visited cities in the Middle East, but it's a place where you have to watch your step.



1) An Australian man claimed he was tortured and forced by police to admit his alleged participation in a jewellery shop break-in in Dubai, reported newspaper Gulf Today last week.



The 32-year-old S.H. denied his involvement in the 11 million dirhams (S$3.9 million) burglary last July, saying that the charges were "wrong, groundless and unfounded".



The Australian and a man from Afghanistan were sentenced to three years' jail last month for keeping the stolen gold with them.



2) One of Britain's most successful businessmen, Safi Qurashi, after paying £43 million (S$86 million) for a man-made island in the Gulf in the shape of Great Britain, was found guilty of signing two cheques with insufficient funds and cancelling another, reported The Guardian last February.



He claimed he was denied access to a lawyer and was handcuffed to a chair for 16 hours after he and his business partner were arrested in January 2010.



Qurashi is now serving a seven-year jail term in Dubai.A former Metropolitan police chief claimed Qurashi was the victim of a criminal conspiracy and had been wrongly convicted.



3) Two Australians have been detained in Dubai since January 2009 over a property deal gone wrong.



As verdicts of not guilty are almost unheard of in the United Arab Emirates, the British charity Detained in Dubai has written to Australia's Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd to seek his "urgent personal intervention" in the case, reported the Sydney Morning Herald last month.



Australians Matt Joyce and Marcus Lee have been detained in Dubai since January 2009 after the Gold Coast developer Sunland claimed it was duped in a multi-million dollar property deal.



But Sunland's chief operating officer in Dubai, Mr David Brown, has admitted in a separate Sunland action in the Victorian Supreme Court that he gave incorrect evidence to Dubai prosecutors.



4) Former Australian soldier Sun McKay, 32, was arrested for allegedly swearing at an airport policeman in Dubai last month.



Mr McKay said he later apologised, but was taken to a room and interrogated for three hours, reported news.com.au His passport was confiscated and he is barred from leaving Dubai as he awaits trial on charges of using insulting and inappropriate language to a police officer.



5) German national Cat Le-Huy, 34, said an airport guard at the airport in Dubai found some melatonin tablets, used to combat jet lag, in his bag in January 2008, reported The Independent last April.





The guard claimed he found 0.06g of hash, which is lighter than a grain of sugar.



Mr Le-Huy spent 24 hours in holding cells at the airport, 12 of which were in solitary confinement.



He was eventually thrown into the airport detention centre and later an"outhouse" of the Dubai central prison, Al Wathba.



He was released two months later without charge.



jenlee@sph.com.sg



This article was first published in The New Paper.

My final blog entry

We have been back in Singapore for about two months now. For a while I have been thinking about writing my final blog entry. Ann Hussien song (see below) gave me the opportunity.

In the things that are transient and do not matter, Dubai is like Singapore and even surpasses her in some ways. In the things that do matter, Dubai has a lot to catch up with Singapore. Unfortunately after reading the latest survey of the Middle East in the Economist, I am not optimistic. For their sakes, I don't mind being wrong. Forecasting has always been a hazardous art.

Singapore is a paradoxical place, almost completely man-made to be politically correct, but I believe exists and thrives by God's grace. Most of us are very good second class citizens. Quite a few of us tend to forget that if we were to be first class without the foreign talent (many not good anyway but a huge net positive overall) we would be very poor first class indeed. I saw this at first hand in the Emirati-first policies in Dubai. I am afraid they would be sunk for it. If you disagree with me, I recommend Alan Beattie new book, "False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World"

Police Cars

Below is a video I shot in March but decided against blogging it here for obvious reason.

I was tailing a police patrol car for several minutes. At the red light, I decided to prepare my camera and took this video. The whole time the police vehicle had its hazard lights on for no good reason.

This is only I have got on video. On several occasions I have witnessed how reckless the police vehicles in Dubai were. Also once they stopped my Learner's car and asked my driving instructor for directions! I suppose it is not unusual if you call the police in an emergency and they could not find you.

DEWA is deaf and blind

I just got another bill from DEWA to pay the utilities and municipality tax. I have informed them several times already to start the last bill process but they never did. Anecdoctal evidence suggest that you must make a trip personally to their offices to terminate the services. The online service to do this is a sham. I wouldn't do that as that could mean they could cut off my electricity and water before I vacate my premises.

I just shot them another email to do the necessary conveniently ignoring the fact that they are deaf and blind.

The positives and negatives in Dubai are quite extreme.

A beautiful sunrise

Just took this picture with my trusty Casio pocket digital camera less than half and hour ago. Welcome to another day of very hot and humid weather and lots of unpacking. I hope we can finish the job today. The children is getting a first hand lesson on shopping - Don't. One of them kept repeating, "please don't buy any more..." Well, this unpopular attitude they say would be bad for the economy, but I suspect we will think up many better things to do. The problem is too few people want to explore this.

One round trip - Container arrives

I had pictures of the boxes being loaded up to the truck last year. Now this a a photo of our boxes from Dubai being unloaded yesterday. It has been very fast. We arrived in Singapore on the 27th of May and our stuff are already here by sea on the 9th of June. The air freight portion was expected sooner but for some reasons I cannot fathom, it didn't fly out until the 5th. So by air and sea, they came at the same time.

What Recession?

The photo above was taken from the East Coast Park this morning. The Singapore port appeared very crowded. What recession? The numbers in the papers had been going down for many months now but the sight on our waters is so different from the recession of '85, where there were very few ships.

The trade numbers are not wrong. The major difference is the size of the Singapore economy. It is much larger than it was almost 25 years ago. Despite this, the parking space at sea hasn't changed much. This is the same with the people thronging the malls and various eateries. Singapore is at a different level now. Trade to GDP ratio may be in excess of three times. Our dependence on the external world has increased but counter-intuitively, we have become more able at absorbing external shocks.

So what recession? This is actually the deepest recession for us since becoming independent. It is just less obvious on the street now. Remember, we all laugh together but cry alone. The affected residents are staying away.

Durian dinner

Daisy and I decided that we will do something exceptional for dinner on friday - We would eat only durians. We bought two the first and smaller one was much better than the bigger second one. You can find durians at Carrefour in Dubai, but they look like they were fallen from the tree last year. Who will eat them? They should be offered to the decomposers, i.e., the bacteria and fungi.

National Geographic Shop

We were in Vivocity on Friday to restart our cable TV connection when saw the National Geographic shop. It was a real treat to the eyes except for the price tags. I especially love the bags, and I always thought this sort of thing is a woman's obssession. Daisy is always eyeing bags and she thinks I am quite good at picking out the nice ones.

If you were wondering if we bought anything? Non. Money sits in my pocket better than elsewhere most of the time.

I will window shop there again and again and buy nothing unless there is a big sale. I will never be tempted, and has had more than 20 years of training already.

Very hot in Singapore

This is the wall clock in our living room. The only interesting data was 30.3 degrees celsius. No wonder so many people have been complaining to me via email when I was in Dubai that it is unbearably hot here. More than once, my sister said she was melting.

I remembered the e-mercury rarely exceeded 29. It has been consistently above 30 since we got back.

In our Dubai apartment where we have 24/7 air conditioning, we usually set the thermostat to a pleasant 24. My desk top clock thermometer would typically read 27. Now above 30 and with almost perfect humidity it is very difficult not to turn on the a/c.

Return to a dearly missed place

"Verging all Teens" occupies the top floor of the Jurong Regional Library. One day after we landed in Singapore, we too the girls to the library, one of their favourite places. We had in Dubai unsuccessfully tried to find any facility that would fill this void.

This photo was taken on a comfy bench as I sat there waiting for the rest of the family to get their books. On my lap is my reserved copy of, "Prisoner of the State" translated from the audio tapes dictated by the later Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang.

Two cities skyline

The last time we approached Dubai International Airport, Lin took a photo shot of the Dubai skyline, I told myself I must also take a shot of the approach when we go back to Singapore. I had hoped to get a photo of the Singapore CBD but discovered that we were on the wrong side of the aircraft. I have here is the picture of Pasir Ris HDB estate in the distance and Changi Village near us.

My point? We are so blessed to be in the tropics where nature is on our side if we want to green the city. Dubai is less fortunate. Theirs is an endless battle with the sand, pitting technology and money against nature. Even Abu Dhabi cannot do much better.

On the way home

30,000 feet above the Indian Ocean in the morning of the 27th and waiting for my bread roll to arrive. All of us have slept most of the journey home, i.e., skipped a "Gordon Ramsey" supper. This is our last trip from Dubai to Singapore. No plans to go back unless it is a different Dubai. Also no plans to fly business class unless forced to do so. We rather fly coach and pocket the difference. Due to the hard times, the Raffles Class ticket to Singapore was absurdly cheap anyway. Yes, we are grateful that for once, we did need to board the bus to our plane. We had the aero bridge this time!

We arrived in Singapore's Changi airport at 11:20am. The midnight temperature in Dubai was 37C compared to 29C at Changi.

Last sunset in Dubai

We have just returned our rental Accord, the equipment from Du and also had a quick dinner. While riding in a cab back to our apartment I took this picture of our last sunset in Dubai. We have booked a cab to the airport for 8pm; more than enough time to shower before we leave.

Dubai is facing a very serious debt crisis which I am convinced from talking to some senior executives here is understated. US$80 billions owing over five years of which about US$ 13 to 17 millions are due this year, the numbers are far too small. One developer I know already owes at least a few billions and there are so many of them!

Dubai cannot be sunk so easily. No country can and furthermore it is located strategically in the most important oil producing area in the world. Dubai will rise again, I explained to people countless times but many of the expats will not be here to ride the next wave.

We are among the few fortunate ones with a choice to remain or leave with benefits. We have chosen to leave for the sake of the children's education.

Our favorite Thai stall

This was our favorite Thai food outlet in Dubai and the MOE. We were hoping to savor it one more time before we return to Singapore. No such fortune, they are closed and undergoing renovation. Seems to me that the stalls here are taking turns to do this. Unlike back home, they take their time to come back.

Visiting Babu @ Burj Dubai

Yesterday I tried to visit Babu after leaving a remote control for a friend I had forgotten earlier. Babu I was told from numerous emails sent to me works on a crane at the very top the world - The Burj Dubai.

I didn't manage to get up there and I think you can guess why. I was told it was dangerous to approach the top too even on no lightning days. Rumors had it that toilets are not provided at the top.

By the way, Babu doesn't exist, at least not in the cabin up there. One day, when the building of the Burj Dubai becomes a documentary on National Geographic or Discovery Channel, we will get to know who this "Babu" was. Till then, keep your fingers crossed. Let a hundred rumors abound. No worries, the truth up there will be revealed.

The Dubai Mall Fountain

Had a wonderful chicken curry dinner a the place a fellow singaporean family last night. Their condo faces the Dubai Mall fountain and here is what we enjoyed after the makan!

Pride of a once Great Developer

Drove by this place in Jebel Ali yesterday afternoon and was surprised to see perhaps a kilometre of once proud flags of a key developer in Dubai torned. Some of the flag poles have even collapsed on the ground. They should never have allowed this to happen. Much better if they had removed them.