Which is worse getting raped in Dubai. Or getting raped and spending 13 months in a Dubai prison?
It would take an incredibly brave and determined individual to knowingly choose prison for their principles. Especially in a foreign country where you have no basic rights, resources or help.
CNN got Lara Logan flown out of Egypt within hours of her attack. She’s given interviews later to condemn the people and warn people. But the sick criminals that attacked her will never be brought to justice. Life isn’t always fair or noble. Sometimes you have to heal and move on.
Marley, that was an interesting point that Dubai has laws allowing non-muslim’s to drink in licensed places. I wasn’t aware of that.
I wonder if the alcohol conviction was a conflict between civil law and religious law? I know in Saudi Arabia they have both civil police and religious police. Religious law may trump civil law in the UAE. That’s just pure speculation on my part. Anyway, both the man and woman got alcohol convictions.
Sorry if I stirred things up in this thread. That was never my intention. I’ve agreed completely that the woman was treated badly and in a Western country the man would have been prosecuted for rape. Anytime a wrong is committed the law should try to provide justice.
I botched up my early attempts to state that any tourist should study carefully the travel advisories before visiting a new country. It wouldn’t hurt to imagine armed police standing behind you the entire time you’re in the country and act accordingly. It’s just common sense when you’re visiting an authoritarian country and you have very limited rights and resources. It doesn’t hurt to be overly cautious.
Hopefully news stories like this will get the word spread about the dangers in visiting the UAE. Maybe other women won’t get victimized.
The problem I’m having (and I think other people are having) is your apparent attitude that these women could have avoided being raped by obeying the law. They broke some law and were raped as result. You see rape as something that’s overly harsh but avoidable.
The rest of us don’t see it that way. Our view is that these women weren’t raped because they broke the local laws. They were raped because the local law has effectively decriminalized rape. Women who stay completely within the law are as subject to be raped as women who break the law.
Why do you assume such a thing? I’ve moved internationally several times and nobdoy has ever informed me of any local laws, I always had to find things out myself. Several times I’ve turned out to be better informed than my employers; in some locations, local people didn’t even seem to understand my questions (I finally got explanations from other foreigners).
The UAE has a dual system of law, both civil (for crimes) and sharia (for relationships between Muslims and family matters). I think the article is wrong, actually. I don’t think it requires the testimony of four witnesses to convict somebody of rape. But the woman does have to prove that the sex was nonconsensual. And I think what sank her was probably three things:
She was a Western woman
She was drunk
She was in a hotel room with a man who wasn’t her husband or family member.
So under that circumstance, the assumption is going to be made, by an Emirati, that she’s promiscuous and immoral, because there’s the assumption that westerners tend to be immoral anyway, and moral women don’t get drunk, and moral women aren’t alone with strange men. So I think that was what sank her more than the lack of four witnesses.
I didn’t intend to give that impression. Victims of rape are blameless. There’s no excuse for rape. Ever.
There are things men and women can do to reduce the chances of being a crime victim. Carrying mace on a key chain, asking security to walk them to the car late at night, self-defense classes etc. Someone going to any Muslim country should research the travel advisories and be more cautious. The UAE is dangerous for any foreigner. My behavior in Vegas would be completely different from Dubai.
But as you said. The victims of rape are blameless even if no special precautions are taken at all.
As someone born and raised in an Islamic country, I’m sort of amused at how much press and comments this is getting.
This is Islam. It sucks. It really really sucks.
It’s not their “culture.” It’s the religion itself. This is what Islam is when left unchecked by western democracy.
But most times it’s pointless to try and explain it to westerners. They sorta have to come up against it themselves and learn the hard way what majority Islamic nations are like to live in.
Apparently, she was attending a business meeting. Sometimes one does not get a choice in whether one attends such meetings or not, or where they are held, if one wishes to stay employed.
Dubai advertises that it’s a tourists paradise AND a dynamic business center. I think that all businesses that care even a little bit about their employees’ safety should take note of this incident, and realize that requiring women to travel to such places is putting them at great risk.
I am sorry…but yeah right.:rolleyes: Dubai is the center of regional finance and a major emerging player on the global stage. If you think that this will have even an iota of an impact on Dubai then you are mistaken. And it is not my intention to doubt that your intentions were sincere when you wrote the above, but I suspect when the opportunity comes you will go, its one thing to state a theoretical, quite another when it tangible and has real consequences staring you in the face. I have heard many people say that they will never go to the US (too anti-muslim, too degrading, foreign policy) Saudi Arabia (too hot, too conservative, anti-women), China (too repressive) Singapore (what a fine city) and they have gone when the time actually came. Hell, I always said I would not work in Dubai due to their less than subtle racism against people like me, and when I actually got an opportunity…I turned it down, only after much soul searching and due to getting a better offer elsewhere.
Fact of the matter is that while people have different religions, everyone worships at the alter of Mammon.
Incidentally it seems now she told the police (under advisement from her manager) to say that the whole thing was consensual and that led to the charges.
[QUOTE=CNN]
Subsequently, she said her manager advised her to tell the police it was voluntary sexual intercourse and likely the whole issue would just go away. She followed the advice and in one of the many hearings at the public prosecutor’s office, she made a statement saying it was voluntary.
[/QUOTE]
All right so she i) made an allegation and then ii) stated to a Prosecutor that said allegation was false and that iii) she had consensual sex in a country where that was illegal.
Her story has not been consistant.
Well this story just took a weird twist. This woman worked for a company that Janet Jackson’s husband owns. This just doesn’t make sense. Why would a billionaire even know a low level employee in a company he owns? It seems very unlikely that he had anything to do with her firing. Billionaires have better things to do then worry about personnel matters in a company they happen to own.
What, you think the owner lives in a plastic bubble? The last major corporation I worked for I was one of the lowly admin staff yet I was on a first name basis with the CEO because I did occasionally interact with him as part of my job. Said CEO also knew the first names of and was quite courteous to the ladies who scrubbed the toilets on his floor because he was like that - he wanted to know the names of the people around him and actually noticed the peons. Not that he was friends with any of the little people but he did notice them and did better than average at the social courtesy thing - maybe that one of the reasons he was CEO, he had a politician’s skill in dealing with people at all levels.
But hey, aside from whether or not billionaires deign to notice the “little people”, from the way these reports have been worded it may well be that it’s not “this owner personally knew then fired this employee” but rather “this owner’s name is substituted for the name of the company in the statement this company fired this employee”. Or “let go” or "terminated’ or whatever the current euphemism is.
Consider your source - it’s the Daily Mail, not known to be 100% accurate but also known to go for the inflammatory and dramatic. You’re right, owners delegate HR or personnel or the equivalent to handle these matters. Owners have something to do with it to the extent they set policy and corporate culture so indirectly, perhaps, but yes, assuming it’s a modern business with typical structure it was HR that did the actual hiring/firing. It’s still common for that to be phrased as “the CEO/owner fired so-and-so”.
That said, I don’t have much respect for a company with such callous disregard for its employees. Anyone with half a brain should recognize that women in the UAE are at a cultural and legal disadvantage and I’d hope a company would both take some effort to inform women moving there from other cultures and/or make some effort to shield these women from such risks. Regrettably, from what I’ve heard many companies there do not, but since most of my sources are the media I have to take the reporting with many grains of salt. Most companies are still run by men and most men do not think about or consider how the situation of women is different from that of men.
The people at the hotel asked “are you sure you want to involve the police?” but didn’t think of telling her why they were asking such a question. They assumed she knew. They were talking at cross-purposes: she expected cops to be polite and helpful (or snarky and helpful, but in any case not to be tossed into jail); they didn’t understand why she was setting herself up for prosecution.
I have no difficulty believing him. I feel the same way. There are things I value far more than a big paycheck. There is literally no amount of money that would lure me into such an oppressive, backward, misogynistic, xenophobic culture.
And if people from that particular oppressive, backward, misogynistic, xenophobic culture do not want to come to the US because they perceive we treat women as human beings rather than chattel, all the better.